Nick Lowe, "Jesus of Cool"

Few musicians can claim renegadery to pup rock and new wave- especially since I'm pretty sure I just made the word "renegadery" up. Fictional words aside, Nick Lowe is considered the bastardized grandfather of quite a few underground styles, which isn't surprising when you hear Jesus of Cool, his first solo album from 1978 which has just been re-released on Demon Records UK. I hadn't heard much of the guy's music when I got the album so I wasn't sure what to expect when I put it on. Then as I listened to the record, I wasn't really sure what to expect from one song to the next. The songs go from frighteningly hypnotic commander chants to cutesy melodies about how wonderful the sound of breaking glass is; and everything in between. This kind of expectation-of-the-mysterious is something I really love in a record when done well. Nick Lowe definately does it well with this one. The only real consistency is Lowe's vocals- he sounds like Lou Reed doing an impression of Elvis Costello at a kereoke party. It's fucking great. And his wide range of sounds isn't surprising when you look at the guy's past 40 years or so of creating music. In 1966 he was in a band who was originally called Kippington Lodge but changed their name to The Brinsleys. When the Brinsleys broke up in 1975 Nick Lowe started producing albums for Stiff Records. He recorded badasses a-plenty including (ding ding ding) Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, and The Damned. In 1979 he married Johnny Cash's fucking step-daughter and recorded a couple of her albums as well, which if you ask me pretty much brings him full circle (punk to country-fuck you, little missy). As I said before, Jesus of Cool was his first solo offering. It was released in the US under the title Pure Pop for Now People for obvious reasons (just kidding, I havn't a g.d. clue why they'd do that), and it introduced Lowe to a base of fans that still refuse to release him from their cult-status grip. It's clear when you hear it why the album never quite made it to the ultra mainstream. It's badical in such a strange way, it almost made me wonder why I liked it so much. Does that make sense? Anyway, there's a lot of humor in it but the funny doesn't excactly jump out at you, it isn't like a Dead Milkmen album or anything. I didn't even notice it until I started listening to the lyrics, although some of the song titles gave me a hint ("Little Hitler?" Nice). The style of music has a nice kind of simplicity; it's really a bunch of different sounds all doing simple things and playing off one another really well. Nick Lowe's range of influences on popular music is shown in Jesus of Cool as it feels very ahead of its time. It's kind of like some sort of seedling for some of the more organic sides of 80's music- which may or may not be a contradiction in terms. Either way, I give Jesus of Cool two very enthusiastic Most Excellents.