Nick Lowe, Los Straitjackets - The Quality Holiday Revue (Live) (2015)

Nick Lowe released Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family in 2013 and supported the album with a tour in 2014, a revue that featured Los Straitjackets as Nick's backing band (Ian McLagan was also scheduled to appear on the bill but he passed on the eve of the tour). In 2015, highlights from the tour appeared as Quality Holiday Revue Live, a cracking 13-track set that touches upon all the pleasures of the revue, from Los Straitjackets' surf rock cover of "Linus and Lucy" to Lowe's expert selection of the Uniques' "Not Too Long Ago" as a cover. The latter indicates how this live album doesn't dedicate itself solely to seasonal material: Nick's chestnuts "Raging Eyes" and "Half a Boy and Half a Man," plus "Somebody Cares for Me" and "Sensitive Man" -- selections that help give this a bit of a laid-back live kick -- and make this feel like a show, not a diligent march through holiday standards. Once the crew does get to the Christmas tunes, they keep things cooking, grooving through Roy Wood's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" and kicking up dust with a rockabilly rendition of "Children Go Where I Send Thee." Nick may end the record on a quiet note with "I Was Born in Bethlehem," just as he opens it with the wryly subdued "A Dollar Short of Happiness," but the heart of Quality Holiday Revue Live is this lean and lively rock & roll. Christmas records usually don't swing this sharp, and Lowe & Los Straitjackets do this so well that this is an album that could be enjoyed outside of the season.