This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Proto-punk pub rocker; new wave singer-songwriter; indie label icon; producer of Elvis Costello, The Pretenders and The Damned; son-in-law of Johnny Cash — you could say Nick Lowe’s been around. And he’s been around long enough to know how to make it look easy.
Which is precisely how he approaches his dozenth solo album. The Convincer is a laid-back, smoothly intimate charmer of a disc, with Lowe gently crooning his way through a dozen light-hearted country ballads, quietly offering bittersweet meditations on fractured romance in tracks like Homewrecker, Only a Fool Breaks His Own Heart, Cupid Must Be Angry and Between Dark and Dawn. The light-fingered rockabilly of Has She Got a Friend? is the closest he comes to the raucous Rockpile roots-rock of his youth, but damned if the pure joy of Lowe’s performace doesn’t make up for the downtempo fare. Besides, it’s not like Nick hasn’t earned the right to take it easy for a while.
