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Back in 1978, at the crux of the punk/new wave movement, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe were an unstoppable team.
Costello was a sneering upstart with a moniker stolen from The King and a look borrowed from Buddy Holly. The angry young man was polished enough to be tolerated by the music industry (unlike much of his punk brethren) and nasty enough to be reviled by much of it.
Lowe was his pub-rock mentor, a bar band bassist (with Brinsley Schwartz) who had co-founded indie label Stiff and fooled enough young punks – and himself – into thinking he could produce records. But “Basher” (as Lowe was called, because of how he “bashed” out tracks in the studio) turned into a great architect of punk and early new wave’s unfettered sound.
Although Lowe produced records for The Damned, The Pretenders and Graham Parker, he earned his legendary status for his work on Costello’s almost uniformly mind-blowing first six albums – chief among them, 1978’s “This Year’s Model.”
For the title of the era’s best album, “Model” is runner-up only to The Clash’s “London Calling.” While Costello’s debut was more of a singer-songwriter showcase, “Model” is a band album. The writing’s just as strong as on “My Aim is True” (if a little coarser), but the sound of Costello’s punishing sophomore release is sharper, more prickly and more forceful.
Sure, Bruce Thomas’ bass and Pete Thomas’ drums stomp all over the record and Costello’s slices of guitar could lop off limbs, but it’s Steve Nieve’s keyboards that are the most aggressive instruments on the record. Pianos and organs usually add depth and warmth to songs, but here, Nieve’s fast fingers point, prod and poke. Nieve drives “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea,” then pierces the song with high-register tomfoolery. A single piano key is downright abused in “You Belong To Me.” Somehow, Nieve finds a way to take the lead role on almost every one of Costello’s blitzkrieg bops. (He’s just as good on this “Deluxe Edition’s” second disc, a rampaging Washington concert from ’78.)
Fantastic as Nieve is, Costello is never outshone on “Model.” The guy would go on to write lyrics more clever and beautiful, but never as fantastically incisive. Costello lets loose his pent-up anger like he’s a boxer spitting out blood between rounds, refusing to march to “The Beat,” eulogizing the emptiness inside of “This Year’s Girl” and putting a boot in the speaker of his “Radio, Radio.”
And you have to love the bait-and-switch of the song titles. In “Hand in Hand,” Costello takes his lover down with him. He doesn’t want anybody saying “You Belong to Me.” Instead, he decides to “Pump It Up,” when he doesn’t even need it.
Executed wonderfully by Costello and his band, and overseen by Lowe, “This Year’s Model” is a celebration of this cruel world.
Although this two-disc edition of “Model” is fantastic (especially due to the concert disc), it’s also at least the fourth time this album has been reissued in the last 10 years. It’s quite a different story of Lowe’s solo debut, “Jesus of Cool.”
If you don’t remember Lowe’s first album bearing that title, it’s because it was called “Pure Pop For Now People” in the States (to skirt any religious controversy). It also featured an altered track list and has been out of print for years.
While “Model” is the better record (by a sneer), the anniversary edition of “Jesus” is a bigger deal. It restores the British title, that version’s running order (for the first time in the U.S.) and includes 10 bonus tracks from the era (including all of the songs from “Pure Pop” that weren’t on “Jesus” and the original disco-ish version of “Cruel to Be Kind”).
This is as well-executed as reissues come, but they could have botched it and Lowe’s inventive pop-rock would still have shone through. Given the tightly curled jangle of “So It Goes,” the loungey, new wave reggae of “No Reason” and the perversity of matching Beach Boys-style sighs to a song called “Little Hitler,” the only way to ruin Lowe’s crisp studio wonder would be to erase the master tapes.
Like Costello, Lowe had nothing but contempt for the record industry (as shown on “Music For Money” and “Shake and Pop”), but his songwriting approach was much more playful at this point. For evidence, look no further than “Marie Provost.” a joyful pop jaunt about a silent movie queen who ends up eaten by her pooch (hence the refrain: “She was a winner who became the doggie’s dinner”).
Lowe is just as creative sonically, whether he’s plucking a punk charge for “Heart of the City” or playing with rockabilly on “They Called It Rock.” “Nutted By Reality” steals from “I Want You Back,” “Kodachrome” and “Abbey Road” in the space of three minutes. Somehow Lowe makes sense of all that and still finds room for a lyric about castrating Fidel Castro. Nice.
But the Basher isn’t just a great refashioner of pop history, but an inventive arranger. “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” – Lowe’s tribute to destruction – is a mantra crossed with studio experimentation crossed with barely there observation. Barely a song at all, “Breaking Glass” is all repeated lines, giant bass, reverberating “om’s” and crazy-fingered piano work. Yet, it might be the best thing on this album, which is as good a pop collection as anything released in the past three decades.
Back in ’78, Costello became one of rock ’n’ roll’s saviors. But Lowe will forever be the “Jesus of Cool.”
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