.jpg)
.jpg)
NICK LOWE & LOS STRAITJACKETS : INDOOR SAFARI
- Went To A Party
- Love Starvation
- Crying Inside
- A Quiet Place
- Blue On Blue
- Jet Pac Boomerang
- Tokyo Bay
- Trombone
- Different Kind Of Blue
- Raincoat In The River
- Lay It On Me Baby
- Don't Be Nice To Me
Label : Yep Roc Records
Release Date : September 13, 2024
Length : 37:33
Review (Heaven) : Het verhaal is bekend: Nick Lowe, pubrocker van het eerste uur, bassist van Brinsley Schwarz, begaafd songwriter en muzikale kompaan van onder meer Dave Edwards (in de band Rockpile), raakte in de loop van de jaren tachtig berooid en aan lager wal door drugs- en drankmisbruik. Hoewel hij met behulp als vrienden als Jake Riveira (de baas van Stiff Records) en Elvis Costello diverse pogingen ondernam om van de drank en uit de goot de raken, lukte dat pas echt toen hij in 1992 onverwacht een kapitaal verdiende met de royalty’s die hij ontving omdat een (instrumentale) versie van zijn song (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding terechtkwam op de soundtrack van The Bodyguard, de filmhit met Whitney Houston. Clean en miljoenen rijker kwam hij in 1994 sterk terug met het uitstekende album The Impossible Bird. In de jaren die volgden maakte hij iedere twee à drie jaar prima albums, gevuld met uitstekende, vaak op rockabilly geïnspireerde eigen popliedjes. Maar vanaf 2011 bleef het stil, op een niet onaardig kerstalbum na. Maar nu is er dan ineens Indoor Safari, opgenomen met de vier gemaskerd optredende mannen van Los Straitjackets. Met schijnbaar achteloos gemak neemt hij de draad weer op: Indoor Safari klinkt alsof Lowe sinds 2011 de studio niet heeft verlaten. Eigenlijk maakt hij met dit prima album dus voor de tweede maal een comeback. Oké, zijn stem klinkt ouder en soms wat dun, maar wat geeft het als je kunt genieten van heerlijk ouderwets klinkende nummers als Jet Pack Boomerang, Trombone of Different Kind Of Blue.
Review (Louder Sound) : At 75, Nick Lowe could be expected to be slowing down – and it is more than 10 years since he last released an album. But now he finally emerges with a new record, this time recorded with his favourite backing group, the Mexican wrestler-faced surf rockers Los Straitjackets. As befits a man who has always made eclecticism the centrepiece of his work, it’s a variegated collection – there are covers (Garnet Mimms’s A Quiet Place, Sammy Turner’s Raincoat In The River) and reworkings (Love Starvation and Trombone, both from EPs) – but what’s most notable is the sheer bounciness of the whole thing. Previous albums have seen Lowe slide into a mellow, Arthur Alexanderine groove, but Indoor Safari is his liveliest album for decades, best exemplified by the creeping twang boogie of single I Went To A Party (which includes a great joke about being mistaken for Robyn Hitchcock). A lively return to fun.
Review (Uncut) : When Nick Lowe toured America to promote Quality Street, his 2013 album of Christmas songs, his backing band was Yep Roc labelmates Los Straitjackets, retro rockers whose own albums suggested they hadn’t heard any new music since about 1965, their records awash with twanging instrumental rock’n’roll, rockabilly, surf music, teen ballads, some Tex-Mex and country. Nick, meanwhile, had been reversing into tomorrow, to borrow an old Stiff sales slogan, for most of his career, plausibly even earlier. They were a perfect musical match. And what a spectacle they offered! Four burly Americans in black hitman suits festooned with gold Aztec medallions, each sporting a lurid Mexican wrestling mask. The dapper Nick out front in crisp white shirt and black slacks, relaxed as a Rat Pack crooner at a poolside matinee. Over the decade Nick’s been touring with Los Straitjackets, there have been occasional forays into the studio, tracks recorded on the hoof, wherever they happened to be, released as singles and EPs. Nine of the 12 songs on Indoor Safari are taken from those sessions, the original tracks either remixed or re-recorded with Los Straitjackets. There are three previously unreleased songs, two originals and a cover. Which makes Indoor Safari in the disappointed opinion of some fans less a new Nick album, his first in over a decade, than a compilation – you could hardly call it a ‘greatest hits’ set. It’s a fair point, but eventually irrelevant. Whatever the provenance of these songs, Indoor Safari is marvellous, by any reasonable critical metric a glorious confection. The album opens with “Went To A Party”, a new song, if that isn’t an odd way to describe a track that makes you think of the flickering black and white ghosts of American teenagers jiving on American Bandstand to a group of surly teenagers straight out of the garage who go on to become The Kingsmen or someone like them. Elsewhere, you might listen to swashbuckling rockabilly rave-up “Tokyo Bay”, outright rocker “Love Starvation” or the wry, sultry country soul of “Don’t Be Nice To Me” and think Indoor Safari maybe returns Nick to the kind of songwriting – hip, humorous, full of hooks – that preceded the so-called Brentford Trilogy, the three albums of confessional introspection that reintroduced Nick as a mature country crooner. There’s certainly a relaxed groove to a lot of these tunes, but their nonchalance shouldn’t be mistaken for flippancy. There are moments here as heart-stricken as anything on The Impossible Bird, Dig My Mood or The Convincer. Nick in some of these songs is often lonely, even in a crowd; haunted by lost loves, lost time. Listening to, say, “Blue On Blue” or “Different Kind Of Blue” (a new song based on a Convincer demo) you imagine Nick like someone in a Sinatra song, something from In The Wee Small Hours, walking deserted pre-dawn streets, the last bars closing, stopping under a streetlamp, hat tilted back on his head, tie loose, smoking a cigarette in the sodium glow. Possibly whistling. “Trombone”, meanwhile, is the saddest song ever written about a valve instrument. Like the deceptively chipper “Crying Inside”, they’re evocative of a time when confronted by any adversity – love, war, a bad day at the office – you were meant to put on what used to be called a “brave face”. They hark back therefore to a certain kind of songwriting when stoicism and discretion prevailed. This was before a generation of early-’70s singer-songwriters flooded the market with confession and ostentatious soul-baring. It’s appropriate then that so much of the music here similarly has a period quality, evocative of a time not so much of innocence as reticence. “Jet Pac Boomerang”, another new song, is a classic example of Nick’s abiding affection for pre-Beatles pop, the kind The Beatles and the groups that followed them erased and replaced. The song ends with a quote from “Please Please Me” that works poignantly as a link between a vanishing musical era and what came next. There are two covers. “A Quiet Place” is a lustrous, soulful take on a 1964 track by Garnett Mimms & The Enchanters, suggested by Nick’s son, Roy. “Raincoat In The River”, recorded by Nick in 2019, was popularised by a breezy Ricky Nelson. Nick leans more into the 1961 version by R&B singer Sammy Turner, produced by Phil Spector, tackling the song with real panache over a wall of Los Straitjackets twang. What a treasure he is.