Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets At Concerts Under The Stars, King Of Prussia, PA, August 2, 2025

Concerts Under the Stars is an annual, outdoor, summer concert series in King of Prussia (Upper Merion Township), Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb famous for its absolutely gigantic, high end shopping mall.

This past Saturday night Nick Lowe paid his first visit to the venue with Nashville's Los Straitjackets who I've seen live twice before. It was my first Lowe concert.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Los Straitjackets, the quartet plays an instrumental mixture of surf and garage rock. They feature two electric guitars, bass and drums. Lowe played an amplified acoustic. No keyboards were to be found anywhere.

Their Mexican wrestling masks may lead some people to believe Los Straitjackets are nothing more than a gimmick, but they're a really tight band. They're also a perfect fit for Lowe because both acts embrace the sounds of early rock 'n roll.

The English star played five songs from his latest album, the fine Indoor Safari, that he released late in 2024 with Los Straitjackets as his backing band. Lifted from the disc were "Went to a Party," "Love Starvation," "Jet Pac Boomerang," "Tokyo Bay," and "Trombone." The rest of the tunes came from his extensive, much-loved catalog.

Lowe took a break midway through the evening and gave Los Straitjackets a chance to shine on their own with a cover of "The Magnificent Seven" and two other instrumentals before he returned to the stage. They were also first out of the gate at encore time with another oldie, a hard rocking cover of Shocking Blue's "Venus."

Lowe and the group were loud enough to prove they are true rock 'n rollers, but not so loud that the mostly mature crowd has to worry about hearing problems in the future. At age 76, Lowe's vocals were both impeccable and crystal clear. The star can sing as well as he did forty years ago. I can't remember another rock concert where the volume mix was this close to perfection.

The album cover you see above is for (Not) Indoor Safari, Vol-1), a ten-song, live souvenir Lowe and Los Straitjackets recorded on tour together in 2024 and released earlier this year. It's available as a limited-edition LP release of only 3,000 copies and as a digital download. Both can be purchased at Bandcamp where - as usual - you can listen to it in its entirety before you buy it. The set includes songs from the studio album and a couple of old, rearranged, Lowe classics. I haven't found it anywhere else on CD, but Lowe's merchandise table at the show was selling them at a far more reasonable price than what the record was being offered for. I couldn't resist. Vol-1 is a perfect souvenir for anyone who attended any of their concerts together or if you're among the unfortunate music lovers who haven't seen these rock veterans work together.

Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets Setlist Upper Merion Township Park, King of Prussia, PA, USA 2025

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