Consumer Guide Album

Brinsley Schwarz: Nervous on the Road [United Artists, 1972]
On Silver Pistol, such songs as "Egypt" and "Unknown Number" rendered Gram Parsons irony willfully opaque. Here Nick Lowe would seem at first to be overcompensating--the side-openers, one by his innocent accomplice Ian Gomm, are genre pieces that announce a disc of straightforward country-rock. But then you notice "I Like It Like That" turning into "the place of the name," or hear that Lowe is "scumbag bound." Which prepares you for the last three songs on side one, each a pleasant country-rock genre piece, each shot through with displacement and tragedy. A−