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Labour of Lust [Reissue]

  • Yep Roc
  • Yep Roc

Long out of print, the English singer-songwriter's wry pub rock landmark is reissued with some bonus material.

Deep into "Born Fighters", a 1979 BBC documentary on the simultaneous recording of Nick Lowe's Labour of Lust and Dave Edmunds' Repeat When Necessary that year, the two Rockpile bandmates are arguing on either side of a kitchen table. Lowe, pub rock pioneer, is trying to express just how much everyman gloom and despair plays a part in his songwriting, going so far as to compare himself to "Joe Blow," the guy who delivers the milk. "I supposedly write the theme music for 'Coronation Street', for life," he says. "That's what I set myself up to do." Edmunds isn't having it. The Welsh rocker lets his friend know that a) he doesn't have anything at all in common with Joe Blow; and b) he thinks what Lowe just said is "stupid, really stupid." Lowe replies with the sort of twinkling deadpan that's defined so much of his pop music: "That's why I think you and me are friends."

It's a great scene captured during the making of a great album. Lowe and Edmunds had become friends a few years earlier, when the latter, a guitar-wielding, rock'n'roll purist from Cardiff, helped produce 1974's The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz, the final album from Lowe's legendary pub-rocking outfit. After that band dissolved, Lowe also took to production (nicknamed "Basher," he helped shape the roughly-hewn sounds of Elvis Costello's first five LPs as well as the debut from pop-punk blueprinters the Damned) and joined up with Rockpile, Edmunds' tireless touring band. That's who we hear behind him in Labour of Lust, his follow-up to solo debut/masterpiece, 1978's Jesus of Cool. Out-of-print since its last CD run in 1990, it's an album far more cohesive and contained than its eclectic, bursting-at-the-seams predecessor. What it lacks in variety or ragged kineticism, it makes up for in the kind of thorough, clock-punching craftsmanship you'd expect from a guy who sees some of himself in a milkman.

And Rockpile-- what a perfect name for a rock band. Though Yep Roc's re-mastered re-issue of Labour of Lust doesn't include a DVD of "Born Fighters", it does a fine job of highlighting the many muscular moving parts of Lowe's songwriting at the time, as they were bashed out by professionals just like those Lowe describes in the hard-charging song of the same name. A bassist, he insisted that every one of his songs rely on rhythm first. So whether it's the devilish basslines of "Big Kick, Plain Scrap" or the galloping snap of Terry Williams' drumwork in opener "Cruel to Be Kind", a converted Brinsley Schwarz song and Lowe's lone U.S. chart hit, the foundational tracks sound golden in mp3 or vinyl format. The latter is pure pop and pure Lowe, a typically self-deprecating gem whose vocal hook is inescapable. Even more satisfying is "American Squirm", a sweeter number that features a spritely Costello on back-up vocals. Layer by layer, it showcases even further that Lowe was as sharp a producer as he was a songwriter. There's as much warmth as there is punch.

Both lyrically and sonically, you'll find a lot of that again from top to bottom, the Dire Straits-alluding "Cracking Up" or coal-miner's ache of "Endless Grey Ribbon" being two fine examples. Yep Roc didn't go overboard in the way of (often) unnecessary extra material, a decision that befits the no-nonsense feel of the record itself. The quiet bonus B-side "Basing Street" is a country-inflected folk number that hints at Lowe's later work, but was rightly left off the original playlist, if only because there's enough of that to chew on as is. At the halfway mark rests "You Make Me", a similarly hushed love tune in which Lowe is alone with just a guitar and some reverb. It's short and plain and startling in its vulnerability. But the crackle of the original recording is still there. It's not hard to imagine Lowe putting up a fight to keep it that way.

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