During his 30 years and counting as a professional musician, Nick Lowe has never shied away from blurring boundaries or bouncing around the musical landscape. With Brinsley Schwarz -- the guitarist and the eponymous band -- he blended rock, country, R&B, New Orleans music, and soul to create the blueprint for the British bar-band sound that became known as pub rock. He's trafficked in various countryish flavors, including rockabilly and mild honky-tonk, and recent work has positioned him as a soulful near-crooner. And, of course, there's his knack for creating pure pop for people, both now and then. Thus, it seems fitting that the Labour Of Love contributors were recruited from a variety of musical worlds.
Representing two points along the folk spectrum are Dar Williams, peppier than usual covering "All Men Are Liars", and Greg Brown, sounding a lot like Dave Alvin in King Of California mode on "Where's My Everything". Zeus-voiced road warrior Sleepy LaBeef joins up with accordionist C.J. Chenier for Lowe's Doug Sahm soundalike "Half A Boy And Half A Man", while "Shting Shtang" makes a good fit for the team of Cajun rockabilly singer Joe Clay and New Orleans guitarist Cranston Clements. An earthy version of "Soulful Wind", with Levon Helm sitting in on mandolin alongside Guy Davis, follows on the heels of harpman Charlie Musselwhite's take on "Faithless Lover". For me, the big question was: Who gets "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding"? The answer: HighTone graduate Joe Louis Walker, a Barrence Whitfield-like soul/blues vocalist.
The classical/jazz/blues label Telarc wandered outside their jurisdiction to line up four prominent Lowe peers: Graham Parker (who you'll swear is John Hiatt during the first verse of "Rose Of England"), Tom Petty (a bit buried in the mix on "Cracking Up"), Elvis Costello (tackling the Brinsleys' "Egypt"), and Marshall Crenshaw, who gets to double-dip: First he offers "Television", a song resurrected from Dave Edmunds' Tracks On Wax 4, and later, in a nifty move, he and Christine Ohlman of the Saturday Night Live band turn "Cruel To Be Kind" into a duet.
Any snags are relatively minor. The R&B arrangement of Rockpile's "When I Write The Book", sung by Andrea Re, struts over the same ground as Walker's "Peace, Love And Understanding." I can think of at least 25 Lowe songs I'd rather hear than "Shting Shtang". And "Soulful Wind" and "Faithless Lover" are too close in mood to be paired up; if we had to get shtung, perhaps between those two was the place for it to happen.
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