By Dave Gil de Rubio
Last Word Features

The late novelist Pearl S. Buck once said that to find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.

That idea seems to apply to singer/songwriter/musician Nick Lowe, who is riding high with “Indoor Safari,” his first full-length album in 11 years.

Lowe will perform Saturday with The Cactus Blossoms at Lulu’s, 32 S. Tejon St. in downtown Colorado Springs. The show starts at 8 p.m., and tickets are $37.50 at lulusmusic.co.

“The thing about these simple, but very direct songs that I was writing was that they only really get a personality and come together after you play them five or six times in front of a live audience,” Lowe said. “When we came to record these songs, that process hadn’t happened. I said we had to either re-record these songs or revisit the original recordings and do things like redo the vocals or put bits and pieces on backing vocals.”

That’s what happened, as Lowe and Los Straitjackets did a session with engineer/producer/musician Alex Hall, where they put the finishing touches on the existing tracks and also recorded a couple of new songs.

What Lowe ended up with on these dozen songs is indeed pure pop. The songs range from the surf tango of “Love Starvation” and mid-tempo heartbreak of “Jet Pac Boomerang” to the ruminative melancholy of “Different Kind of Blue” and the rave-up opener “Went to a Party.” 

Concert-goers can expect a wide-ranging setlist anchored by some popular staples.

“We’ve gotten to the stage now where there are certain tunes we have to play,” Lowe said. “I can’t really do a show without playing ‘Cruel To Be Kind,’ ‘Peace, Love & Understanding’ or ‘So It Goes.’ There is a sort of structure there, and it’s never a chore to play any of my well-known songs. But we’ve got a pretty big repertoire now.”