Nick The Knife

Nick Lowe's pre-Phillies game show at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixvile on Sunday ngiht was a career spanner, designed to promote the devilishly good former pub-rocker's newish Quiet Please: The New Best Of Nick Lowe, I suppose, though typically, the understated Englishman didn't mention that it existed. Instead, he merely took the occasion of his visit to what he called the "lovely and picturesque" Chester County former steel town (which he admitted, for all he knew, "might be a seething cesspit of vice") to take a "troll through my catalogue." There were stops along the way for Rockpile classics such as "Heart" and "Ragin' Eyes," glib mid-career moments such as the deliciously dead-on "All Men Are Liars," and more recent melancholy numbers such as "Lately I've Let Things Slide," as well as, from 2007's superb At My Age, the mean and Machiavellian "I Trained Her To Love Me,"  which Lowe described as "a diabolical blast of cynicism. I can't help it, it's like a form of Tourette's."

Performing solo with finely calibrated subtlety and a dash of dramatic flair, he played the hits, such as they are. New Wave Nick's "Cruel To Be Kind"; "I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock and Roll," with guitar whiz opener Bill Kirchen (pictured below, sorry the photos are fuzzy, I was in the balcony and my camera is lame); a whispery take on his own "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love & Understanding?"; and "The Beast In Me," written for Johnny Cash, as a gripping closer. And one new song, the langorously lonesome "I Read A Lot," which was notable for the typical Lowe-ian use of a word like "whilst" in a cleverly crafted pop song while depicting time alone with a book as an exquisitely sorrowful activity. "So if you ask me how I pass the time contemplating what I have not," he sang. "I'll reply: I read a lot."  Hey Nick: Put the book down, write some more new ones, and get back to this side of the pond more often.

Previously: Steve Martin Cancelled