Release and Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Blender | |
| Robert Christgau | B+ |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.9/10) |
| Rolling Stone | (favourable) |
Muswell Hillbillies was the band's first album for RCA Records, their prior recordings having been released on Pye Records (Reprise Records in the United States). The album was not a commercial success (it failed to chart in the United Kingdom and peaked at #48 in the U.S.), and its sales were a disappointment following the success of Lola the previous year. It was, however, named 1972 album of the year by Stereo Review. In the 1984 Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rolling Stone editors called this album Davies' "signature statement" as a songwriter.
After the release of the Kinks' next album, 1972's Everybody's in Show-Biz, Davies took the band into a four-year "theatrical" incarnation (1973–1976) with an expanded line-up of musicians and thematic concept albums constructed around elaborate stage shows.
Read more about this topic: Muswell Hillbillies
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)