Nick Lowe — The Abominable Showman

The third of the pile of Nick Lowe albums I picked up all at the same time, around 1990 or ’91, for next to nothing at Last Vestige Records in Albany.

Last Vestige opened a shop at the end of the vinyl era, in 1989, and quickly became one of the premiere used record stores in the tri-cities. But by around 1990, 1991, I wasn’t collecting much vinyl, new or used, and used CDs just were never of much interest to me. (I think in part that’s because it was much harder to tell how they would play, and people really seemed to treat CDs harshly. Whereas you could deal with a skip or two on a record, a flaw in the right spot on a CD could render it useless, and I wasn’t into the risk.)

As I mentioned with the previous two, I came late to Nick Lowe, and I continue to love his later works much more than the earlier records, but 1983’s The Abominable Showman starts to show his transition to a mature and seemingly effortless songwriting style, as well as his ongoing success with country themes. On the rare occasions that I played vinyl in the ’90s (being much more consumed with CDs and, for a bright, shining moment, MiniDiscs), this was one I’d play fairly frequently, being one of my “new” acquisitions.

I’ve bought every Nick Lowe solo CD that has come out since “Party of One,” and they’re all beautiful, straightforward pop perfection, always with a cheeky surprise tucked in somewhere. That he’s become associated in recent years with one of my other all-time favorite acts, Los Straitjackets, seems particularly satisfying, though I never could have predicted that he’d be fronting a surf-rock group that plays in Mexican wrestling masks.