NICK LOWE Vinyl Records and CDs

Name anything good about Indie rock -- chances are Nick Lowe did it first. He's been writing witty and literate pop ditties since the early 1970s. He was helping young punks do it themselves decades before Lo-Fi existed. And he latched on to country music when Jeff Tweedy was still in junior high. (Lowe's take on Alt-Country is so authentic, he was actually Johnny Cash's son-in-law for a little while.) Maybe he'd be a superstar if he could stop amusing himself with clever puns (he named one EP Bowi in a convoluted take-off of that artist's Low), but it's more likely that a talent like Lowe's was doomed to cult-dom from the beginning. If you like your music smart, idiosyncratic and deceptively simple, give him a chance.