People (Don't) Change: Nick Lowe at Wolf Trap
Nick Lowe likes to keep things simple these days.
Nick Lowe titled the career-spanning compilation he released earlier this year Quiet Please, and it ain't false advertising. The softer, sadder, more introspective country-soul phase Lowe commenced with 1994’s The Impossible Bird now comprises the entire second half of his recording career, one that’s been decelerating (though not eroding in quality) for some time. 2007’s At My Age was his first disc in six years, and he’s released no new music since.
So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his avuncular, agreeable set at the Barns of Wolf Trap Sunday night was closer to a song-for-song reprise of his show at the Birchmere two years ago that it ought to have been. Take out the grilled and chilled salmon salad and sub in one new tune — which Lowe preceded with a funny if unnecessary apology that was longer that the song itself, another sad-sack she-done-gone called, amusingly, “I Read a Lot” — and it would be the same concert. Once again, “People Change” kicked it off, “The Beast in Me” shut it down, and in between came 18 of the most casually devastating, immaculately performed little two-to-three minute pop songs one is likely to hear in 2009 (or 2007, or 2112).
Given his embarrassment of strong material, and the fact that he played, with two or three exceptions, the same 20 songs as on his ‘07 visit, it was all the more disappointing that Lowe spent a mere 70 minutes on stage. Maybe that’s how, at age 60, he keeps himself in such warm, buttery voice. He played the entire show on a single acoustic guitar, which the sonorous environs of the Barns arrayed to intimate effect. Though some of the peppier tracks, like "Seven Nights to Rock," fairly cry out for a band, hearing Lowe howl his Elvis impression (not the one whose career he helped launch) on an extended "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)" was fair compensation for the lack of a rhythm section. The songs were sublime — I just wish they’d been more, and more varied.
The setlist:
People Change
Ragin’ Eyes
What’s Shakin’ on the Hill
Lonely Long-Limbed Girl
Lately I’ve Let Things Slide
Has She Got a Friend
All Men Are Liars
Heart
When I Write the Book
I Read a Lot
Cruel to Be Kind
Man That I’ve Become
I Live on a Battlefield
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
Without Love
I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)
(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding?
Soulful Wind
Seven Nights to Rock
The Beast in Me