New-Wave artist goes country on 2007 modern classic
Throughout a musical career that began in the early 1970s, Nick Lowe has always marched to his own drum as an artist, songwriter and producer.
He’s had his songs covered by artists such as Elvis Costello and Dave Edmunds and has produced albums for those musicians, as well.
At heart, Lowe is a pure, straight-ahead rocker, but like Costello, his eclectic range of music knows no boundaries, and Lowe has gone country at times. That’s really not a surprise considering that he was a onetime son-in-law to Johnny Cash, having married the Man in Black’s stepdaughter, country singer Carlene Carter.
In 2007, Lowe released “At My Age,” an underappreciated classic work that chronicles the ups and downs of romance. By 2007, he had experienced his share of both bliss and heartbreak, and he explores these topics in detail on the album, which exudes a cool rockabilly/country flavor.
It chronicles frustration in cuts like “Long Limb Girl” and “Love’s Got a Lot to Answer For,” but there also is an air of hope in songs such as “A Better Man” and “The Man in Love.” A pair of the album’s tunes, “I Trained Her to Love Me” and “The Club,” are vengeful. In the former, Lowe trains a girl to love him so he can break her heart; in the latter, he explores the side of love in which a lover reaches in for a man’s heart just to break it just for fun.
This album, although simple in its delivery like most traditional country and roots rock, works on two counts. It’s crafted extremely well, and, more importantly, it strikes a nerve simply because we’ve all been there at one time or another, and we’ve all taken a journey filled with both ecstasy and despair on more than one occasion. And for the most part, we’re all willing to go on that trip again.
People live real-life fairy tales and get hurt all too often. Lowe shows everybody how complicated love can be, but that’s why “At My Age” is considered the classic it is.
