Customer Reviews

Pure Pop for Now People

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I don't want to pick on other reviewers or those kind enough to post lists here, but I do feel obligated to point out that this album (just like several of Dave Edmunds' albums) is not really a solo album at all. It's a Rockpile album that, as was too common, had to be released as either an Edmunds or Lowe album due to contractual issues and the fact that each artist was on a different label.

With that said, this album (both as "PPFNP" and "Jesus of Cool", with slightly different track order) and Edmunds' "Tracks on Wax 4" are the TITANIC TWO of Rockpiledom. Both are essential for fans to own. Most of the tracks on this album are also on "Basher: Best of Nick Lowe", but a couple are not

Very important Rockpile album. Get it!

This wonderful album from 1978 was one of that year's best offerings and remains a classic. The music covers a wide variety of pop and rock styles but every song is blessed with a catchy tune and witty, intelligent lyrics. In addition, the album has a sharp punk edge to it that made it stand out then and now. The only other artist doing the same thing back then was Elvis Costello.

So It Goes is a bouncy little pop tune, whilst I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass has an eerie air of desperation about it, like it was the answer to David Bowie's Breaking Glass on his Low album from 1977. Tonight is beautiful melodic pop and Marie Provost is a weird tale of the silent screen actress who fell into obscurity when the talkies came in and how she was nibbled on by her lapdog before they found her body. If it weren't for the engaging melody and lyrical twists the song would have been rather macabre.

Heart Of The City is heavy rock, whilst Little Hitler (co-written by Dave Edmunds) is a quirky little pop song in the same vein as Elvis Costello's Two Little Hitlers on his Armed forces album from around the same time. Nutted By Reality is another witty, humorous pop song with a great melody and Music For Money ends this masterpiece of an album on a pounding rock note.

I think Nick lowe was a member of a UK pub-rock band Rockpile before he went solo with this classic album, which was released under different titles in the UK and USA. The UK version was called Jesus Of Cool. I subsequently rediscovered Nick Lowe in the 1990s when I heard his brilliant work The Impossible Bird, an album of totally unique country music containing some of that decade's most memorable and well crafted songs. You just cannot keep a true genius down!

I was a nick lowe fan from the first time I heard him do, What's so funny about peace love and understanding? He has satire in his aproach to pop music and manages to keep the sugar of pop mixed with a liitle dose of dry humor to temper it. He plays with words like a great chef deals with spice. He adds enough to make it taste good but not too much to overpower it and let the taste come thru. Anyone who can spoof Castro and Hitler on the the same disc has the world view for breakfast. This disc is a trip thru the world of pop by a purveayor of purloined prose. Well worth your time to track down a copy.

In turn, I hate to pick on the previous reviewer from '07, but this isn't a Rockpile album at all. (It's probably being confused with Lowe's next record, "Labour of Lust," which was a kind-of Rockpile album; Edmunds-Bremner-Williams provided instrumental backing, with lead vocals and compositions in Lowe's hands.) On "Pure Pop," Lowe used pick-up players from the pub rock scene, mostly Andrew Bodnar and Steve Goulding, and also, significantly, old Brinsley bandmate Bob Andrews, whose nuttily manic piano solo on "Breaking Glass" continues to trill through fans' sonic memories thirty years hence.

But that's all just talking around the trivia; the soul of this album is Nick Lowe in his purest form, with a wild playfulness that turned inside-out every pop & rock convention in existence. Girl-group harmonies, grunge guitars, reggae rhythms, high-speed punk -- Lowe hurled them all like cream pies to create a funny, irreverent, gloriously entertaining record that would stand as his ragged masterpiece. In fact, there's nothing else like this in his catalog, as every other album employs a working band throughout. And that is "Pure Pop"'s greatest charm: We get Lowe at his purest, poppiest, and now-est -- all the things he put through the blender with a twisted grin to hilarious distinction. Really, it's all there in the title -- and all on display in an album that continues to entertain today on every level.

Lowe may have already been an experienced craftsman by this point, and would continue to develop into a superior songwriter; indeed, no cult artist has earned greater critical stature over the decades. But nothing improved on the thrilling rush delivered by "Pure Pop," Lowe's smart, jaundiced, madcap valentine to pop music and rock-and-roll.

This brilliant 1978 album was one of that year's best offerings and remains a classic. The music encompasses a wide variety of pop and rock styles but every song is blessed with a catchy tune and witty, intelligent lyrics. In addition, the album has a sharp punk edge to it that made it stand out then and now. The only other artist doing the same thing back then was Elvis Costello.

So It Goes is a bouncy little pop tune, whilst I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass has an eerie air of desperation about it, like it was the answer to David Bowie's Breaking Glass on his Low album from 1977. Tonight is beautiful melodic pop and Marie Provost is a weird tale of the silent screen actress who fell into obscurity when the talkies came in and how she was nibbled on by her lapdog before they found her body. If it weren't for the engaging melody and lyrical twists the song would have been rather macabre.

Heart Of The City is heavy rock, whilst Little Hitler (co-written by Dave Edmunds) is a quirky little pop song in the same vein as Elvis Costello's Two Little Hitlers on his Armed Forces album from around the same time. Nutted By Reality is another witty, humorous pop song with a great melody and Music For Money ends this masterpiece of an album on a pounding rock note.

I think Nick lowe was a member of a UK pub-rock band Rockpile before he went solo with this classic album, which was released under different titles in the UK and USA. The UK version was called Jesus Of Cool. I subsequently rediscovered Nick Lowe in the 1990s when I heard his brilliant work The Impossible Bird, an album of totally unique country music containing some of that decade's most memorable and well crafted songs. You just cannot keep a true genius down!