Simon Reid

It’s 11 years since the evergreen Christmas LP, Quality Street, and for various reasons Nick Lowe had suggested that’d be his final proper album. However, backed up by the unlikely backing band Los Straitjackets - surf instrumental specialists who perform in Mexican wrestling masks - another entry in Nick’s meandering but always rewarding discography has taken shape.

Almost all of these songs have trickled out on singles and LPs over the past 6 years or so, but they’re re-recorded here and sequenced expertly alongside a couple of new ideas, including the punchy opener ‘Went To A Party’. Across 37 minutes, Los Straitjackets allow Nick to mix elements of his 60-year career into an easy-drinking cocktail. Tracks… More

I popped the CD in the car and revisited this for the first time in years. It is of course a beautiful album and towering achievement. My son wanted 'Sloop John B' on repeat. But 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times' remains my absolute favourite, packed with even more lush, ingenious moments than the rest of it...not least the haunted variation on the chorus chord sequence that emerges for the coda and fade-out.

After a run of ethereal, mournful albums that left Nick’s singing and speak-singing exposed atop Warren Ellis’ quivering synths and queasy loops, Wild God is the first work in a while that makes full use of the Bad Seeds.

The more feral and jubilant moments on Carnage – a lockdown project credited to just Cave and Ellis – hinted at what might await us once the Bad Seeds could get back in a room together, but still they exceed expectations. It’s particularly special to hear Tommy Wydler on drums again. Rejuvenated after a long illness,, he announces himself in the very first second with a walloping, cymbal-cracking performance on ‘Song of the Lake’, a contender for their best album opener… More