Ray Davies, Royal Festival Hall, London

Do you remember the Kinks? Yes, Ray, we do

Contrary conservative pop stars, like buses, seem to come in pairs. Last weekend threw up the chance to see either rock's favourite Farm Aid supporter - Neil Young - in Hammersmith, or his Anglo counterpart at the Festival Hall. Ray Davies, England's finest living chronicler, manages to confound us from the word go by bounding on stage, not to Flanders and Swann or Percy Grainger, but to some wild zydeco tune.

It's not by chance that Davies has made records called State of Confusion, Misfits, and Give The People What They Want. He has a sly, sideways logic. Not for him the fully orchestrated recreation of an old album, à la Brian Wilson or Arthur Lee. Instead he launches into "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" on an old acoustic with George Formby zeal, getting everyone to sing the "Oh yes he is!" part. Midway through "Autumn Almanac" he stops to chat. "Strange song isn't it? Got to number three in the chart and it's all about gardening." It's pure music hall, skewiff but absorbing. Ray is also a fine raconteur. He tells stories about the dropped-jaw reaction to "Well Respected Man" when they first played it in America (the line "he likes his fags the best" had a rather different meaning here), and describes the Davies household on a Saturday night in the Fifties, his six older sisters dressing up and dancing round the living room. Just when you think you've pegged him as an old-time romantic, out comes the sly humour. He pays "tribute" to the late Noel Redding by saying he looked a bit like Charles Hawtrey, then gets the crowd to raucously sing along to the bleak "Dead End Street". It's more Weimar than Wood Green.

Still he looks a little unsure of himself, every so often running his fingers nervously through his hair. He talks about a recent Kinks tribute album as if he can hardly believe people would remember tracks from the mid-Sixties. He claims not to even recall writing the exquisite bossa nova "No Return" until Bebel Gilberto asked him to sing it with her at the Carnegie Hall - where he promptly forgot the words. When he mutters "Here are a bunch of songs you probably haven't heard," there is audible seat-shuffling as the crowd prepares for half an hour of new songs, but instead we are treated to most of the Village Green album, played simply and quite beautifully by Ray and a second guitarist who appears to be Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. "Animal Farm" and "Big Sky" are tearfully evocative, "Picture Book" and "Johnny Thunder" are torn into with relish. The Union Jack suit he wore at the Jubilee party is wiped from the memory - this is truly majestic.

When he does play a newie, "Next Door Neighbours" is melancholy and charming, a tribute to old Muswell Hill comrades that could have been plucked from Village Green itself. "I hope they're OK," Ray muses, "'cause I'm not... no, I'm OK." You want to buy him a pint, put your arm around him, reassure him.

For the second half of the set, Ray is joined by a disinterested looking bassist and drummer and it all becomes very uneven. There's an astonishing "Where Have All The Good Times Gone" and a beautiful fragment of "Stop Your Sobbing", while a thoroughly neurotic "All Day and All of the Night" is too fierce to be ruined by a Lenny Henry-like call and response.

For an encore of "Waterloo Sunset", Ray returns in the dreaded Union Jack suit. "You know where I'm at," he says, unambiguously. Except, of course, he's wearing Nike trainers and holding a green bottle which I'm pretty certain doesn't contain traditional English ale. God save the contrary sod, vaudeville and variety.