Joe Jackson kicked off his Monday concert at the sold-out 9:30 club with "One More Time," a perfect choice for the 48-year-old Englishman, whose current U.S. tour is a unique nostalgia trip: simultaneously celebrating the 25th anniversary of his debut album and promoting a new disc recorded in the same spirit.
Reunited with the Joe Jackson Band -- bassist Graham Maby, guitarist Gary Sanford and drummer Dave Houghton -- the still scarecrow-thin Jackson spent 90 minutes tearing through numbers from his memorable first record, "Look Sharp!," offering renditions from the new "Volume 4," which purports to pick up where the band's original work left off in 1980, and generally being a happy guy, displaying little of the insufferable self-consciousness that has marred certain phases of his career.
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Reviews and information about area concerts can be found in the Music section of our Entertainment Guide.
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Recorded in 1978 but not released until April 1979, "Look Sharp!" was a fine signpost of English new-wave pop, and the six crisply rendered selections from it were the evening's highlights. The title track, "Sunday Papers," the punk velocity of "Got the Time," "Fools in Love" (including a detour into the Yardbirds' "For Your Love") and even the '80s bar band staple "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" sounded surprisingly vital. New songs such as "Take It Like a Man" and "Still Alive" flirted with the essence of '79 but didn't quite achieve the kick of "Sharp!" or its follow-up, "I'm the Man," whose title track provided a swaggering conclusion to the 19-song set.
Jackson added a mid-set solo turn, sitting down to the keyboard for versions of his jazz-pop splashes "Be My Number Two" and "Steppin' Out," as well as a stroll through Lennon-McCartney's "Girl." It was a nice, wine-sipping kinda interlude, but it was a relief when the band returned, for Monday's entertaining show proved that Jackson's most enduring record remains his first.
-- Patrick Foster
