Nick The Knife
	Produced recorded and honed by Nick Lowe
	Released on February 1982
	UK CHART POSITION #99 . . . US CHART POSITION #50
	Find it at GEMM
FC 37932 cover [high resolution scan]

N ick the dull knife, which is okay if you’re soft like butter on the guy. I am. So I’ll tell you that “My Heart Hurts,” “Raining Raining” and the unstoppable “Heart” (served here in a light island sauce) cut right to the core of Lowe’s appeal. But you might miss the edge of “And So It Goes” or “Cruel To Be Kind.” Those were transcendent pop tracks. Knife doesn’t have any. It gets under your skin like a Dave Edmunds album might, but at his best Lowe is cleverer than this. However, you can’t make a case for Labour of Lust as a great album without showing some respect for his Knife; too little separates them. Excise “Dose of You” and “Cruel To Be Kind” and the two records compare favorably. Knock Knife and Labour’s foundation crumbles. Granted, nothing on his last record was as dumb as “Ba Doom,” nothing as plainly poached as “Let Me Kiss Ya,” but those are minor offenses. Lowe is such a lovable scruff, after all, and atones for it so sincerely on the sentimental tracks (“Couldn’t Love You,” “Raining Raining”) that sometimes he seems the second coming of Smokey Robinson. Or is it a smokescreen for the fact that Lowe’s original compositions sound less original with each new album? Nick The Knife is easy to swallow, no one is denying that. No one is rushing to praise it as the equal of his first two albums either. Once again we see the knife cut both ways: the rise of a new talent purchases its own fall. (I should be writing fortune cookies with a pair of ragged claws.) It was a slow descent; I didn’t come out of the clouds until His Cowboy Outfit. The point of all this being to go ahead and buy Knife if you like Nick.

FC 37932 back cover

TRACK LISTING

1. BURNING    2:04
2. HEART    3:41
3. STICK IT WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE    3:40
4. QUEEN OF SHEBA    2:30
5. MY HEART HURTS    (Nick Lowe/Carlene Carter)    2:40
6. COULDN'T LOVE YOU (ANY MORE THAN I DO)    2:35
7. LET ME KISS YA    2:56
8. TOO MANY TEARDROPS    (Nick Lowe/Carlene Carter)    2:33
9. BA DOOM    2:19
10. RAINING RAINING    2:46
11. ONE'S TOO MANY (AND A HUNDRED AIN'T ENOUGH)    (Nick Lowe/Kim Wilson)    2:34
12. ZULU KISS    (Nick Lowe/J.E. Ceiling)    3:22
    
    All songs written by Nick Lowe unless noted

CREDITS

NICK LOWE -- bass and singing and guitar, backing vocal
Ben Barson -- piano and hammond
Martin Belmont -- guitars
Aldo Bocca -- guitars, engineer
Billy Bremner -- guitars
Paul Carrack -- piano and hammond
Carlene Carter -- piano and hammond
James Eller -- more bass
Bobby Irwin -- drums, backing vocal
Neil King -- piano and hammond, audio grip
Steve Nieve -- piano and hammond
Terry Williams -- drums

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