On the cover of his solo debut album
Jesus of Cool
,
Nick Lowe
is pictured in six
rock & roll
get-ups -- hippie, folkie, greasy
rock
& roller,
new wave
hipster -- giving the not-so-subtle implication that this guy can do anything.
Nick
proves that assumption correct on
, a record so good it was named twice, as
Lowe
's American record label got the jitters with
Jesus
and renamed it
Pure Pop for Now People
, shuffling the track listing (but not swapping songs) in the process. As it happens, both titles are accurate, but while the U.K. title sounds cooler, capturing
's cheerfully blasphemous
swagger,
Pure Pop
describes the sound of the album, functioning as a sincere description of the music while conveying the wicked, knowing humor that drives it. This is
pop
about
, a record filled with songs that tweak or spin conventions, or are about the industry. Only a writer with a long, hard battle with the biz in his past could write
"Music for Money"
and much of
does feel like a long-delayed reaction to the disastrous American debut of
Brinsley Schwarz
, where the band's grand plans at kick-starting their career came crumbling down and pushed them into the pubs. Once there, the
Brinsleys
spearheaded the back-to-basics
pub rock
movement in England and as the years rolled on the band got loose, as did
's writing, which got catchier and funnier on the group's last two albums,
Nervous on the Road
and
New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz
.
In retrospect, it's possible to hear him inch toward the powerful
of
on the
Dave Edmunds
-produced
New Favourites
, plus the handful of singles the group cut toward the end of their career -- it's not far cry from the
' stomping cover of
Tommy Roe
's
"Everybody"
to the shake and
-- but even with this knowledge in hand,
still sounds like an unexpected explosion as it bursts forth with blindingly bright colors and a cavalcade of giddy pure sound.
is letting his id run wild: he's dispensed with any remnants of good taste -- well, apart from the gorgeous
"Tonight,"
the only time the album dips into
ballads
-- and indulged in a second adolescence, bashing out three-chord rockers and cracking jokes with both his words and music. This reckless
works not just because the tracks crackle with excitement -- not for nothing did
earn the name "Basher" in this period; he cut quickly and moved on, the performances sounding infectious and addictive -- but because it's written with the skill that
developed in the
. He knows how to twist words around, knows how to mine black humor in
"Marie Provost,"
knows how to splice
"Nutted by Reality"
into a brilliant
McCartney
parody, knows how to pull off the old
Chuck Berry
trick of spinning a tune into two songs, as he turns
"Shake and Pop"
into the faster, wilder
"They Called It Rock."
That latter bit picks up a key bit about
-- it's self-referential
that loves the past but doesn't treat it as sacred. It is the first post-modern
record in how it plays as it builds upon tradition and how it's all tied together by
's irrepressible irreverence. It's hard to imagine any of the
power pop
of the next three decades without it, and while plenty have tried, nobody has made a better pure
record than this...not even
(of course, he didn't really try to make another record like this, either).
Nobody may have bettered
, but
Yep Roc
's 30th Anniversary edition of the album betters it by tacking on ten bonus tracks, all recorded after the demise of
in 1974 and before the 1978 release of
-- a time that was dubbed
The Wilderness Years
on a 1992 compilation that gathered these stray tracks. Here, it was possible to hear
shake off
in favor of
. Sometimes, he tried very hard to leave the past behind, as when he cut a series of
bubblegum
singles that they would force
United Artists
to cut him loose from his contract. The first of those,
the Tartan Horde
, cut a tribute single to the
Bay City Rollers
which turned into a Japanese hit (
"Rollers Show"
turned up on
, but the
Gary Glitter
send-up
"Allorolla"
"Bay City Rollers We Love You"
did not), which kept
UA
's interest high until
Disco Brothers
singles extinguished the label's desire to keep him around, paving the way toward
. Neither the two other
Tartan Horde
cuts or the
single are on this expanded edition (
is offering it as a bonus download), nor are any of the harder-rocking cuts from
--
"Fool Too Long,"
the two-chord
"Truth Drug"
"I Got a Job"
all are terrific reasons to seek the comp out after wearing out this reissue -- but there is a heavy dose of that disc's 18 songs, all skewing toward the bright, subversive
that's on the proper album. There are traces of
here, in the rampaging
"I Don't Want the Night to End"
and the
country-rock
"I Love My Label,"
but they're driven from the pub by a blindingly brilliant hook on the former and sly humor on the latter. These bonus tracks also showcase more of
personalities:
"Shake That Rat"
is a delirious instrumental, he turns
Sandy Posey
"Born a Woman"
upside down, he conveys the majestic sweep of the Wall of Sound on a cover of
Goffin & King
"Halfway to Paradise."
The bonus tracks also include
"Heart of the City,"
the B-side of
"So It Goes,"
the first single released on
Stiff Records
and thereby one of the opening salvos in the
punk
revolution (a live version was on the actual album), and an early version of
"Cruel to Be Kind,"
which would turn out to be
's biggest hit just a couple years later. This early version is faster, wilder compared to the version he'd cut with
Rockpile
, and that description applies to all of his
era. It's when
ran wild, creating
that was pure, peerless, and permanently thrilling. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine