Two of the most potent forces in pop-rock music today (all the way from England just for your pleasure), Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe provide an overdose of not just good, but great music on their new albums.
Lowe, when he's not producing Costello or Graham Parker or a myriad other talents, spends his time meticulously crafting urgent rock that often as not is hilariously satirical. Pure Pop for Now People came out in England under the title of Jesus of Cool, and includes his Bowie put-on "(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass," as well as the first Stiff Records single issued, "Heart of the City," and what may be the best pop song of the decade, "So it Goes." Needless to say, I like the guy and his music.
If you saw Elvis recent Zellerbach Auditorium show, This Year's Model is already familiar to you. It's even more devastating than his first album, rough, recorded fresh without overdubs, urgently pushing rock in a new direction that is spare and hard. "The Beat," "Pump It Up" and "Lipstick Vogue" are only the highlights of an album that is as important to 1978 as the Stones' Out of Our Heads was to 1965.
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