Ol’ Saint Nick, playful pop alchemy, and the retro-reinvention of the Christmas album…

“It’s an enormous amount of work to make a song sound like you’ve just knocked it off,” Nick Lowe announced in a recent interview, but that’s just what he’s been achieving regularly in his second life (third? fourth?), which began—post-Brinsleys, post-Rockpile—with 1994’s Impossible Bird. Here, Lowe extends that streak with a shocking dalliance, bringing his considerably clever muse, legendary distaste for the staid and conventional, and deep musical roots in pre-Beatles pop, torch balladry, C&W, rockabilly, R&B, soul, and ska styles to bear on a dozen lively, entertaining musings on the yuletide season.

Read more here: Uncut.co.uk