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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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NICK LOWE AND HIS BAND
The Royal Festival Hall, London, October 23rd 2007 |
| I
don’t think you get much casual trade at a
Nick Lowe
gig, especially not at the recently refurbished
Royal Festival Hall on London’s arty South
Bank. We’re mostly all of a certain age and
probably beyond the point at which we could be called
‘fans’, having in some respects all
been through too much together and managed, more
or less, to come out on the other side. |
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| So
the interval is almost like a reminiscence therapy
session – and have you noticed Serge, how
loudly blokes like to reminisce at gigs? The two
behind us are talking high volume, hard core bollocks
– “Never thought I’d see the day
when we’d pay to see Basher in a place like
this”, “Yeah, or be here with all these
middle classes”, “It’s never going
to be as good as that night down the police club”,
“Yeah – I mean do you remember when
we’d go down to gigs like that at the Ricky
Tick club”, “Always with knives,
pills, and birds”, “And some top nights
in Leytonstone…”, “Of course she
never liked us going there”, “Seen much
of your kids since the divorce?”, “Not
really, how about you ...?” So it goes. |
At My Age (Nick Lowe) |
Lowe
has just released a new album, the first since 2001’s
The Convincer. At My Age is a perfectly crafted
piece of work – nine original songs and three
covers, including a country meets skiffle version
of Charlie Feather’s ‘The man in love’
and “Not too long ago” – originally
performed in 1965 by Joe Stampley and the Uniques
but sounding every bit like a Lowe original. Of
the Lowe compositions ‘I trained her to love
me’ (the song that drew some sharp intakes
of breath when we first heard it performed at the
Barbican – more middle classes – a few
years ago) is probably the one that stands out most.
But actually they’re all – characteristically
of Lowe’s compositions - so good, so economic,
so precise, so perfectly produced, and so carefully
performed, that they provide a complete and compelling
body to the evening’s set. |
| It’s
not quite the studio band on stage – long
time collaborators Robert Treherne – aka Bobby
Irwin - (drums) and Geraint
Watkins (organ and piano) and new boy Matt Radford
(double bass) are there, but in place of Steve Donnelly
on guitar it’s sometime Van Morrison band-member
Johnny Scott. And for songs like ‘A better
man’, ‘Long limbed girl’ and ‘Other
side of the coin’ (written originally for
Solomon Burke) there’s a brass section, featuring
Martin Willing on tenor sax and clarinet and Annie
Whitehead on trombone (in place of blues veteran
Chris Barber who features on the album). Lowe normally
performs solo these days, but he likes to put a
band together for “special occasions”
– and this is very special, even if an irritating
hum from the sound system does take away some of
the glow. |
| Oh,
and I should have said that the new Lowe songs follow
his well-established groove of lost love, regret,
hope, fear and all that other universal stuff that
makes them so attractive. And – in case you’re
wondering he’s gone on record as saying that
he doesn’t hate women – “but singing
about people who hate women is very good fun”.
He kicks off solo with ‘People change’,
‘Soulful wind’, ‘What’s
shaking on the hill’ and ‘All men are
liars’ before being joined by the band. “Welcome”,
he explains, “to an evening of first class
light entertainment”, before the band tear
into ‘Without love’ (the other Lowe
song recorded by Johnny
Cash), ‘Lately I’ve let things slide’,
‘Has she got a friend?’ and ‘I
trained her to love me’. To be frank most
people could have stopped at that and felt pretty
pleased with themselves. Lowe and his band continue
with ‘Indian Queens’, ‘Cruel to
be kind’, a studio perfect version of ‘You
inspire me’ and then five in a row from At
my age, before ‘Shting shtang’, ‘Rome
wasn’t built in a day’, Lowe’s
Rockpile classic ‘I knew the bride’.
Solo, Lowe finished the set with that song
– twelve years in the writing, his Jekyll
and Hyde classic that formed the centrepiece of
Johnny Cash’s American Recordings –
and you could have heard a pin drop as he sang the
final lines of ‘The beast in me’. |
| The
vacuous veterans behind us leave to get their buses
back to the lonely suburbs as Lowe returned for
a solo ‘Heart of the city’, played ‘What’s
so funny about peace love and understanding’
with the band and then finished solo again with
Moon Mullican’s rockabilly hit ‘Seven
nights to rock’. It’s a standing ovation
– and quite rightly so, for the variously
described “Headmaster of rock”, “Jesus
of cool”, and “PhD of pop”. With
his unmistakeable haircut, unmistakeable voice,
quite excellent band and perfectly hand-crafted
artisanal songs Lowe is a performer of huge accomplishment.
You should buy his new record, and if you get the
chance to see him, then go. Isn’t that right,
Serge? - Nick Morgan (concert photograph by
Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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