Nick Lowe has a new album coming out this fall. I found that out about it a little bit (a week? two?) ago when I was kind of browsing through Amazon and saw the title. At that point, AMazon didn't have the artwork up, and the title appeared as Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for, I was a bit confused.
Now I'm not confused anymore. Amazon still lists the title the same, but they have the cover art, so you can see that it's Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family.And it's a Christmas album. Generally speaking I'm not big on Christmas albums, but if the music's good then I'm game.I was able to hear the entire album a couple of days ago when Yep Roc (his label in the US) hosed streaming of the full album for 24 hours. As of now you can still hear samples of each song, but not the whole things.
The album sounds pretty much like his last two albums (At My Age and The Old Magic). Mellow, vocals forward in the mix. It's the crooner Nick. Some numbers are kind of bouncy. Not a bad effort.
I have fun, though, thinking about what the late-1970s era Nick would have said had he been told that he'd eventually be doing a Christmas album -- and not songs like the Kinks' "Father Christmas" or Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run."
In a bit of crass commercialism, Nick is also selling a Nick Lowe snow globe, and Christmas cards that say "'Tis the Season for Peace, Love and Understanding." That last item seems all the more cynical given that the song "What's So Funny 'bout Peace Love and Understanding" was really meant sarcastically, and it's only in the past decade or two (especially since 9/11) that he's reinvented that as a serious plea.
Whatever, I can ponder the crassness all I want. The bottom line is that I'll be pre-ordering it. It is, afterall, a Nick Lowe album.
Oh yeah, the 7th track keeps sounding to me like "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz.
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