On the cover of his solo debut album, Jesus of Cool (in the U.K.; in the U.S., the album was called Pure Pop for Now People), Nick Lowe is pictured in five rock roll get-ups (general consensus puts Dave Edmunds on the album cover at center bottom) -- hippie, folkie, greasy rock & roller, new wave hipster -- giving the not-so-subtle implication that this guy can do anything. Nick proves that assumption correct on Jesus of Cool, a record so good it was named twice, as Lowe's American record label got the jitters with Jesus and renamed it Pure Pop for Now People, shuffling the track listing (but not swapping songs) in the process. As it happens, both titles are accurate, but while the U.K. title sounds cooler, capturing Lowe's cheerfully blasphemous rock roll swagger, Pure Pop describes the sound of the album, functioning as a sincere description of the music while conveying the wicked, knowing humor that drives it. This is pop about pop, a record filled with songs that tweak or spin conventions, or are about the industry. Only a writer with a long, hard battle with the biz in his past could write Music for Money and much of Jesus of Cool does feel like a long-delayed reaction to the disastrous American debut of Brinsley Schwarz, where the band's grand plans at kick-starting their career came crumbling down and pushed them into the pubs. Once there, the Brinsleys spearheaded the back-to-basics pub rock movement in England and as the years rolled on the band got loose, as did Lowe's writing, which got catchier and funnier on the group's last two albums, Nervous on the Road and New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz.

1		So It Goes
2		I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass
3		Tonight
4		Marie Provost
5		Heart of the City
6		Rollers Show
7		They Called It Rock
8		No Reason
9		Little Hitler
10		Nutted by Reality
11		36 Inches High
12		Music for Money