Nick Lowe made it big as a pioneer of what the English called “pub rock” and Americans usually call power-pop. Lowe had his biggest successes in the New Wave era but continues to release records and perform, and six of his middle-period records are being reissued this year on the Yep Roc label. In the opinion of one fan, staff writer Nick Paumgarten Nick Paumgarten, Lowe is as great as he ever was. Now Lowe is engaged in figuring out how to age gracefully in rock and roll. “Some of my colleagues and associates have to behave like they did when they were young, and I wanted to avoid that rubbish at all costs,” he told Paumgarten on a recent visit. “The thing was for me to accept the fact that I was getting older, and to actually embrace it and use it as an advantage instead of trying to hide it.” But, after the rocker recently lost close friends to illness, accepting old age might be getting a little harder. Plus: on-the-job horror stories from three great writers—Gillian Flynn, Akhil Sharma, and Alison Bechdel.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.