NICK LOWE
At My Age
(Yep Roc)
www.yeproc.com
www.nicklowe.net
At My Age may be Nick Lowe's first album of new material in six years, but the wait has been well worth it. The live promo CD Untouched Takeaway (2004) may have helped to tide us over, but when Lowe gets his crack team into the studio (Geraint Watkins on keys, Steve Donnelly on guitar, and Bobby Irwin on drums), that's when the real magic happens. In keeping with the mature, blue-eyed soul of his recent releases (The Convincer, Dig My Mood), Lowe shows how it's done. Now 58, Lowe no longer invokes the high-energy bravado of "Fool Too Long" or Rockpile's Chuck Berry in overdrive. Instead, we find the master wordsmith reworking the soul, pop, and country idioms to fit his highly individualistic approach to songwriting. He might be at his usual smarmy, caustic best ("I Trained Her to Love Me") or hopeful ("A Better Man") or sincere ("Hope For Us All "). Lowe includes his own version of "The Other Side of the Coin," a song he wrote for Solomon Burke. He also includes his requisite covers--three of them this time. "Not Too Long Ago," written by Joe Stampley and Merle Kilgore (who penned "Ring of Fire" for Johnny Cash), has a British Invasion kind of vibe. "Feel Again," a swinging pop-country number, was originally cut by Faron Young, and "The Man in Love" was an unreleased tune Lowe came across which shared a lot of the same lyrical and musical sensibility that can be found in his own work. Lowe claims to include covers on all of his albums so as "to not appear too self-absorbed," and as much as they represent the sounds which have made him the songwriter that he is, Nick still manages to find a way to make these songs his own. Few artists are as successful in interpreting the work of others as Nick Lowe (you can even hear it as far back as "Hypocrite" from the early 1970s Brinsley Schwarz days). Hands down, At My Age is one of the best records I've heard this year.
-EDWARD BURCH
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