Nick Lowe”The Impossible Bird” UpstartNick Lowe was...

Nick Lowe

“The Impossible Bird”

Upstart

Nick Lowe was instrumental in the birth of independent, anti-corporate rock. In 1976, the first single of his solo career, “So It Goes”/”Heart of the City,” was the first release by Stiff Records, the British label that soon gave us the Lowe-produced Elvis Costello and presaged punk’s rebellion against an excess of pomp and polish in ‘70s rock. Cycles of popularity having spun around, Lowe is back on an independent label--the fledgling, Rounder-distributed Upstart Records--for the first time since that era. “The Impossible Bird” (only his fourth solo album in the past 10 years) is a low-key affair that isn’t seeking to ignite any new pop revolutions, but it continues the unassuming mastery that Lowe has displayed in such relatively recent work as “The Rose of England” (1985) and his previous outing, “Party of One” (1990).

On “The Impossible Bird,” Lowe gets help from a band of unsung players expert enough to give the album a loose, easygoing, off-the-cuff feel without succumbing to sloppiness. Geraint Watkins sweetens the ballads with warm, gospel-soul organ, while guitarist Bill Kirchen, a former Commander Cody accomplice, plays in a stuttering, laid-back style reminiscent of J.J. Cale. Most of the songs gurgle or twang along in a Southern-roots groove that borrows simultaneously from soulful R&B; sources and the rockin’ side of country music. Lowe also strives on several songs for the stark, acoustic simplicity that marks “American Recordings,” the recent record by Johnny Cash. He offers his own version of “The Beast in Me,” a Lowe original that Cash covered on “American Recordings.” But the Man in Black, who was Lowe’s father-in-law when Lowe was married to Carlene Carter, was much more convincing in putting across the song’s tormented introspection than its fundamentally amiable composer.

While it’s Lowe who sports a fowl’s foot on the album cover, the impossible bird he’s talking about seems to be the human female: The album is mainly about his inability to keep one or more of them from breaking his heart. Realizing that you can’t make love-gone-rotten sink in emotionally unless you’ve first allowed for a glimpse of love-so-fine, Lowe includes a couple of glowing ballads in the album’s first half. “True Love Travels on a Gravel Road” is a winsome country/soul hybrid written by A.L. Owens and Dallas Frazier, and Lowe’s own “Shelley My Love” is a sweetly crooned valentine that Paul McCartney should kick himself for not having thought it up first.

Lowe keeps his characteristic wit about him as the mood darkens. In “Where’s My Everything?” he shades a lamenting lyric with a humorous, hang-dog delivery. And “Drive-Thru Man” offsets wistful sentiments with lighthearted allusions to Cash’s signature deep baritone.

Lowe is capable of edgier feelings, such as the roiling tension of “I Live on a Battlefield” and the bitter streak that finds its way into the mellow lament “14 Days.” By the end, spirits revived, he moves on down the road to the brisk, twangy guitar rhythms of an affirmatively romantic Ray Price oldie, “I’ll Be There.” The only real impossibility on this album lies in trying to resist the gently seductive pop charms of the crafty old bird who made it.