Los Straitjackets feat. Nick Lowe, Enmore Theatre, 16th February 2020

In the first half of a career now approaching its seventh decade, silver-haired gentleman and scholar of music, Nick Lowe had at least three lives: pub rock pioneer, pop star, producer to the stars. And he had a grand time each time.

Nicholas Drain Lowe, aka Basher, was not just producer for the cream of the British New Wave – Elvis Costello, Pretenders, Graham Parker, The Damned, Wreckless Eric – and had a burst of fame on the pop charts himself with songs such as Cruel To Be Kind, I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock And Roll and that song about the dog who ate the film star, Marie Provost. Nick Lowe also wrote (What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love And Understanding, made a modern classic by Elvis Costello & The Attractions.

In the second half of his career, Lowe has become a songwriter of elegant, witty and sometimes quietly devastating songs that draw from the same well as pre-Beatles pop, early rock’n’roll and the classic songbooks of Britain and the USA, and are sung in a superbly relaxed croon.

In a series of creamy-sounding albums from 1995’s The Impossible Bird he’s written about broken hearts and lonely rooms, stoplight roses bought too late to mend a rift, and those days all you want to do is stay in and make love.

Now, on his first tour of Australia in seven years, Lowe offers an old-fashioned revue show, with the roistering fun of Los Straitjackets. You can hear Lowe and Los Straitjackets, together on their new four-track EP, Love Starvation. Or see them together on stage.