Backed into an artistic and financial corner in the mid-’70s, The Kinks had to compromise to get back in the game, agreeing to a new multi-album deal with Arista on the condition that they put aside their rock opera obsessions and refocus their energies on crafting more commercially viable music. The initial results were mixed; 1977’s Sleepwalker was an often-downcast affair, while Misfits found solace in turning frontman/chief songwriter Ray Davies’ anger back on the band’s audience, calling them out for their passive acceptance of the formulaic pablum that was increasingly passing for rock and roll, even as he began mining its tropes like a master.
With 1979’s Low Budget, the band came full circle, drawing on its own British Invasion roots to craft a raw, heavy, hooky, decidedly commercial record that was simultaneously a brassy concept album aimed squarely at its American audience’s psychic Achilles heel—the economic malaise and oil crisis of the late 1970s. Peaking at #11 on the Billboard charts, it was the most commercially successful album of the band’s career and assured their survival as a going concern well into the ’80s. 
Kickoff cut “Attitude” sets the atmosphere right away, with driving rhythms anchoring a fat riff and Davies growling out the verses before softening up on the pre-chorus, setting the listener up for the gut-punch of the chorus itself. Formulaic? Yes. Effective? Absolutely. It’s social satire you can air guitar to (or dance to, if you like).
Another of the album cuts to get significant airplay, “Catch Me Now I’m Falling” grafts a fairly serious-minded lyric about America’s sudden vulnerability onto a blatant rip-off of the chorus riff from the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash.” (I’ve always wondered how Davies got away with this… was he pals with Jagger and Richard? Was there some kind of quiet understanding or arrangement?) Of course, if you’re going to nick a riff from the competition, that’s a hell of a good one to borrow.
The raw, guitar-driven Invasion sound is all over this album, featured on the jaunty, winking “Pressure,” the stinging title track, the equally cutting “Misery,” and the playful blues “A Gallon Of Gas.” Cuts like “National Health” and “Moving Pictures” are a bit more experimental without veering from Davies’ focus on shining his interrogation lamp on America’s every neurosis. The lone exception here is “A Little Bit Of Emotion,” where, as if to prove he’s still capable of sincerity, Davies offers a plaintive character-study ballad that’s the flip side of “Attitude,” revealing what’s real and tender instead of skewering the fake and superficial.
The biggest musical departure on this album—and sadly, its big hit single—is their purely satirical take on America’s crisis of confidence, the disco-flavored “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman.” As biting a piece of social commentary as you could ask for, the song was nonetheless embraced by the very people whose escapist/defeatist mindset it savages, becoming a huge club hit in its 12” single extended disco mix.
Low Budget runs out of gas a bit in its patchier second half and the lyrics tend to be less thoughtful and more blunt-edged than on Misfits, but the album’s raw appeal won over an American audience desperate for both escape and a danceable riff. The success of Low Budget would ironically raise the Kinks’ own fortunes for the next several years.