Nick Lowe is one of popular music’s most storied and influential songwriters. The composer and performer of such hits as “Cruel to Be Kind” and “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” Lowe is perhaps best known for writing “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” which earned cult status as a New Wave anthem after being recorded by Elvis Costello in the late 1970s.
With “Indoor Safari,” Lowe has returned to the music scene with a vengeance, releasing his first full-length album in more than a decade. And “Indoor Safari” was well worth the wait. During a July solo appearance at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, Lowe test-drove four of the album’s tracks, including “Love Starvation,” “Blue on Blue,” “Trombone,” and “Tokyo Bay.” The resulting performance offered a deep inside look into the qualities that make Lowe such a dynamic and affecting player. There is a simplicity—an economy of sounds and words—at the heart of Lowe’s musical output that never fails to charm. With “Indoor Safari,” these songs take on ever greater power as the songwriter spars with subjects related to life’s vicissitudes, the confounding nature of love, and the inevitable prospects associated with growing up and growing older.
The songs on “Indoor Safari” are characterized by a deceptive simplicity in terms of delivery arrangement. During a recent interview with Lowe, he explained the merits of keeping things simple to me. He fondly recalls his mother, who sang with a voice like Rosemary Clooney. “I used to really like singing with her in the house,” he recalled. “By the time I was about 8 or 9, Lonnie Donegan was my man, you know. And like so many people of my generation, we were getting a lesson in the blues—not to mention a lot of the romance stuff.”
“Indoor Safari” is rife with romance and the blues, with a knowing eye towards the weighty fact of our mortality. In “Crying Inside,” for example, he sings, “I’ve been wisecracking like the good old days / but pretty soon I’m going to slip away.” When he’s not pondering the specter of death, Lowe sates himself with the timeless rites of romantic love. “Come play your song,” he sings in “Trombone,” and “make it the one about good love gone wrong.” With “Indoor Safari,” Lowe is amply backed by Los Straitjackets, the surf-infused, rock ‘n’ roll band, complete with telltale masks, from Nashville.
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In many ways, “Indoor Safari” finds Lowe coming full circle to his pre-fame pub band days, when fans were content to enjoy the sweet sounds of a love song along with a pint or two, followed by a turn around the dancefloor. In “Jet Pac Boomerang,” he ponders love’s trials and tribulations, ultimately recognizing that it’s all somehow worth it “when she says she loves me” and “angel choirs sing.” As if to punctuate his nostalgia, Lowe makes an explicit nod to the Beatles and those days of yore, singing, “last night I said these words to my girl.”
“Indoor Safari” is precisely the kind of record that music lovers will find themselves returning to, time and time again, because of Lowe’s buoyant melodies and thought-provoking lyrics. Please please me, indeed.
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