Nick Lowe Online

Three decades on, Nick Lowe has evolved from British pub-rock pioneer (with Brinsley Schwarz) to new wave godfather (producing Elvis Costello, among others) to postrock crooner. It s a surprising but convincing transformation, begun with the country-inflected minimalism of 1994 s superb The Impossible Bird and pared to an even leaner chamber pop on this subdued charmer. Bird found Lowe damping his jokester s instincts to dig deeply and soberly into romantic despair and a gnawing, midlife confrontation of self. While the tracks on Dig My Mood suggest that some of the wounds have healed, there s still an elegiac air to songs like Faithless Lover, What Lack of Love Has Done, and Failed Christian that qualifies these as songs of experience. Lowe s baritone has deepened and acquired a deft finesse with redeeming glimmers of wit and no loss of intelligence. The 2021 reissue of Dig My Mood is remastered from the original tapes.