The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
It’s all a commotion in retrospect
With a discography that’s the envy of many musicians and a career spanning more than four decades, Lloyd Cole reflects on his musical endeavours. He will be at the Gardyne Theatre on April 8
There was a time was when Lloyd Cole was marked down as a potential great. Often wrongly presumed to be Scottish, the suave troubadour is in fact English but remains one of music’s most singular talents to emerge north of the border.
His gift was first glimpsed on Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ debut single Perfect Skin, released in 1984.
Inspired by Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, the urbane Cole’s Lou Reed-like rasp and erudite yet ironic lyrics, coupled with his band’s penchant for catchy, Byrds-like janglepop made the track an instant classic. That it only reached number 26 is surprising, likewise the follow-up Forest Fire stalled just outside the top 40.
Slow burn surrounding the early Commotions soon caught hold and their debut album Rattlesnakes saw critics fawning over the group Cole and bassist Blair Cowan had started while studying at Glasgow University.
Arriving in The Smiths’ slipstream, Rattlesnakes sold well with the selfdeprecating frontman garnering comparisons with Morrissey for his similarly bookish outlook and vegetarianism.
The Commotions’ second album, Easy Pieces, reached number five in 1985 on the back of top 20 singles Brand New Friend and the blackly humorous Lost Weekend.
Ever the perfectionist, Cole now looks back on his biggest success as a retrograde step, believing the band were overly concerned with trying to produce a more electrified Rattlesnakes.
His swooning Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken? provided Sandie Shaw with a hit in 1986 before an over-budget
third album Mainstream put the Commotions back in the top 10 in 1987 but also signalled their demise.
Cole moved to New York to resume writing with Cowan, adopting stubble and longer hair as the new decade dawned for his REM and T Rex-influenced eponymous solo debut.
Both it and subsequent offerings Don’t Get Weird On Me Babe, Bad Vibes and Love Story consolidated his 90s reputation as a purveyor of intelligent, countrified rock albums.
Thankfully, a paucity of single successes didn’t knock Cole’s seemingly unwavering confidence.
“I think one of the reasons I struggled to be a proper pop star was because I had no ideas for videos,” he says.
“Self-deprecation is fun and it can be very charming but one has to have a high self-regard. I’m not saying that I’m the best songwriter of my generation but I think I’m one of the best.”
Whether Cole has fulfilled his potential will be open to debate when he plays works from 1983 to 1996 at his “Retrospective” gig in Dundee.
His acoustic show comprises Commotions’ favourites, tracks from those first four solo LPs and unreleased material ahead of a forthcoming box set.
Having paid his dues in an era when playing live was the pathway to a recording contract, Cole embraces the close scrutiny that the one-man format inevitably bears.
“People say that the song is the most important thing, but if you make a mess of it people won’t listen to it,” he adds.
“The delivery of a song is still important. Even when I’m doing my acoustic show I find that when you break a song down on the guitar, you find whether it stands up.”
Now aged 56, Cole is arguably more prolific than ever, and since 2000 has added a new album roughly every two years to his impressive body of work.
Along the way he’s dabbled in ambient electronica but it’s been his fan-funded return to full band recordings in recent years that have been most welcomed and which will surely demand more intriguing acoustic stagings in future.
I’m not saying I’m the best songwriter but I think I’m one of the best