At 75, Nick Lowe could be expected to be slowing down – and it is more than 10 years since he last released an album. But now he finally emerges with a new record, this time recorded with his favourite backing group, the Mexican wrestler-faced surf rockers Los Straitjackets.
As befits a man who has always made eclecticism the centrepiece of his work, it’s a variegated collection – there are covers (Garnet Mimms’s A Quiet Place, Sammy Turner’s Raincoat In The River) and reworkings (Love Starvation and Trombone, both from EPs) – but what’s most notable is the sheer bounciness of the whole thing.
Previous albums have seen Lowe slide into a mellow, Arthur Alexanderine groove, but Indoor Safari is his liveliest album for decades, best exemplified by the creeping twang boogie of single I Went To A Party (which includes a great joke about being mistaken for Robyn Hitchcock).
A lively return to fun.
