CD Reviews

Nick Lowe: Jesus of Cool

Yep Roc

By JEFF TAMARKIN | February 12, 2008

4.0 Stars

Nick Lowe recently recalled that the upstart punk bands he produced for Stiff Records in the late ’70s often referred to him as Grandpa — Lowe, after all, was 26 at the time. But it was his experience — he’d put in several years with the roots-revering pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz — that enabled those newbies to harness their essence on vinyl, and that same experience that made Lowe’s 1978 Jesus of Cool (released in the US under the less-Bible-thumper-baiting title Pure Pop for Now People) one of the great debuts of the era. Lowe was not a punk, but he understood the appeal of melodic, stripped-down rock and the power of the three-minute single. Of course, there was little chance that songs sporting lines like “She was a winner who became the doggie’s dinner” (“Marie Provost”) or “I remember the night the kid cut off his right arm” (“So It Goes”) would find much traction on the charts, at least in America. But Lowe’s sizzling, neo-retro anthems, among them the breakneck “Heart of the City” and the reggae-paced, quasi-quirky “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” endeared him to those very same punks and a more generalist audience that would continue to embrace him — especially once he teamed with the like-minded guitarist Dave Edmunds in Rockpile — for several more years. The reissue tacks on 10 additional tracks, making this expanded edition the final word on Jesus of Cool.