Pinker and Prouder than Previous (Nick Lowe, Columbia).
Browse through the CD bin at your neighborhood record store and you`ll find such luminaries as Weird Al Yankovic, Samantha Fox and the Bee Gees for your hiss-free, pop-less, lasts-for-a-lifetime listening pleasure.
You`ll look a long time, though, if you look for Nick Lowe. An imported best-of CD is all that`s available, and his latest release is not to be found- a remarkable feat in this digitally crazed time.
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Lowe, the power popster and incurable punster, seems to sum up the situation himself on the back cover of ”Pinker and Prouder then Previous,”
which features him staring up from the bottom right corner at a sign on top of a brick wall that reads ”Market Place.”
The graying Lowe is practically falling out of the picture, not to mention the market place. That`s a shame.
His credentials are impressive: producer, at various times, for Elvis Costello, Graham Parker and the Fabulous Thunderbirds; former co-leader, along with Dave Edmunds, of Rockpile, the quintessential pub-rocking British band;
bass player on John Hiatt`s critically acclaimed ”Bring the Family”; and author of one of rock`s greatest couplets, ”She was a winner/But she became her doggie`s dinner.” His last two albums, ”Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit” and ”The Rose of England,” were barely noticed gems.
But Lowe does not exactly help his own cause on this record, his last for CBS. The front cover is a pinkish, garish mess. The first two tracks have a subdued demo quality that probably had Columbia`s marketing execs reaching for the aspirin, or something stronger.
The rest of the record, though, beginning with the spare but rollicking
”Big Hair,” is up to Lowe`s normally high standards. He outdoes Graham Parker on Parker`s ”Black Lincoln Continental.” He turns Hiatt`s ”Love Gets Strange” into a small pop treasure. And he teams up successfully with producer Edmunds for ”Lovers Jamboree,” echoing both Rockpile`s glory days and the later-day Fab T-Birds.
At one point, Columbia actually advertised the expected CD release of
”Pinker and Prouder.” Here`s hoping that happens someday-because this is one of those albums that seems to get better with each listen. (Reviewed on cassette.)