Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, MJ Lenderman. (Photos / Supplied)
Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, MJ Lenderman. (Photos / Supplied)
Indoor Safari
by Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets
Nick Lowe and Los Strait-jackets: his sharp lyrics now come with a backbeat. (Photo / Supplied)
Few from the punk era underwent the transformation Nick Lowe did: from boozy Brit, self-confessed cheeky chappie to elegant, white-haired crooner of soulful American country ballads.
He wrote (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, a signature song for fellow travellerElvis Costello, and dealt in irreverent humour: after Bowie released Low, the self-styled Jesus of Cool (the title of his debut album) released the EP Bowi.
But the wide-boy role was limiting, and he could see himself as an ageing cliché. He refined his lyrics, fashioned his songs into soulful country with pedal steel and mature emotions. There was a golden period from the 90s to The Old Magic (2011), which contained singular, melodic songs of solitude, bitterness and acutely observed cynicism.
But he became restless in that skin, too. His favoured band recently has been Nashville’s Los Straitjackets, a surf-cum-rock’n’roll guitar band who wear Mexican wrestling masks.
Lowe’s sharp lyrics now come with a backbeat and twang (Went to a Party, the rockabilly Tokyo Bay), which, ironically, can recall his first bands, Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile. The emotionally broken songwriter is still there, however, (Trombone, the gorgeous Different Kind of Blue). On Crying Inside, he sings, “I’ve been wisecracking like the good old days … if you look at my face, you’ll see my cheeky side [but] I’m crying inside”.
Jet Pac Boomerang ends with a quote from the Beatles’ Please Please Me. He returns to the 1950s and 60s for two excellent covers: Garnet Mimms’s A Quiet Place and the little-known Raincoat in the River.
Indoor Safari isn’t gold-standard Lowe, but if it sends anyone to that run of great albums, it will have served a greater purpose.
Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman. (Image / Supplied)
Outside his position in North Carolina’s alt-country-cum-rock band Wednesday, 25-year-old singer/guitarist Lenderman runs a parallel career in idiosyncratic slacker-folk with pedal steel, fiddle and slide guitar.
This fourth studio album under his own name elevates his croaky vocals and lyrics – which roam from the witty to the weird – into downbeat, observational Americana gone wonky.
On the visceral guitar rock of Rudolph, the man who once thought of being a priest appropriates from Dylan: “How many roads must a man walk down … til he learns he’s just a jerk … I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you”.
His wit can sting but be self-inflicting, as on Wristwatch: “You say I’ve wasted my life away. Well, I got a beach home up in Buffalo and a wristwatch that’s a compass and a cell phone that tells me you’re all alone.”
The grinding Crazy Horse sound of She’s Leaving You catches him at his cynical best: “She’s leaving you … go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues. Believe that Clapton was the second coming”.
And Lenderman is quite the guitar hero himself in that ragged lineage from Neil Young to The War on Drugs.
An album you adopt as much as admire, enjoy, and champion.
