The years have treated Nick Lowe’s debut album curiously. On first listen, I was a little disappointed, but that may be because when Jesus of Cool was released in America, it was under the name Pure Pop for Now People, and the songs had a different running order. “So It Goes” was a far more arresting opening track than “Music for Money,” which is more firmly rooted in the pub rock milieu from which Lowe emerged. During the first and second wave of punk, Lowe’s sense of humor was simpatico, with B-movie imagery, Bowie swipes, a send-up of the Bay City Rollers and a Brill Building treatment for a song about dead woman eaten by her dogs. In not one but two songs, he bit the hand that fed him, singing about record companies not getting his music.

 

Time hasn’t killed the funny parts, but they aren’t as funny. The pastiche quality of the album is more obvious with this sequence (which includes another 10 songs associated with the album), but what also becomes clearer is Lowe’s pop sense. The American title explained what the album was about, but no matter the genre he was toying with, Lowe understood it well enough to love it, mock it and make it catchy at the same time. He also never got lost in the pop or the whimsy; the lyrics were grounded in the acceptance embodied in the phase “So It Goes.”