Lloyd Cole – Olympia – Live Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Lloyd Cole – Vicar Street – 30/10/19 – Live Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2019/10/31/lloyd-cole-vicar-street-30-10-19-live-review/

Album Review: Lloyd Cole – Music in a Foreign Language

2003’s Music in a Foreign Language saw Lloyd Cole’s first self-recorded effort. It’s a fairly muted affair without percussion or electric guitars. Lloyd pitches in on guitar, bass, piano and of course vocals, with contributions from Neil Clark on guitar and Dave Derby on lap steel.

The title track introduces proceedings, setting the tone for the album with gently picked guitar and soft keyboards. Behind the soft, almost easy-listening instrumentation lies a dark, brooding heart, which reveals itself in the lyrics of many of the songs, chief amongst them My Other Life (“clearly you can see my clothes are torn, clearly this demands an explanation”).

Proceedings here are, for want of a better word, “mature”. This is never clearer than in a new version of No More Love Songs, Lloyd driving the point home by re-recording the song. It’s a fuller, more-realised version with keening steel guitar which for my money, works a little better than the more stripped-down original recording.

Lloyd takes on the challenge of Nick Cave’s People Ain’t No Good, and falls marginally short, though it’s still a relatively pleasant version. The inclusion of this song is perhaps Lloyd’s way of making a point? He saves the best for last with Shelf Life, a deeply moody lament about how he is “consumed by delusions of grandeur” over a softly picked guitar and a bright keyboard part, making this an almost stately kind of ballad, a perfect accompaniment to shortening evenings as “the night’s drawing in”.

It’s fairly different to any of Lloyd’s previous work. Very tasteful without any blandness, this is the type of thing the likes of Leonard Cohen should be doing now.

Album Review: Lloyd Cole – Etc (lost songs, tunes 1996-2000)

This album, released in 2001, is billed as a collection of odds and ends, but in reality it hangs together like a ‘proper’ Lloyd Cole album. It opens and closes with the instrumental Backwoods, a wistful, acoustic piece of music which sets the tone nicely. What follows is prime Lloyd Cole. Old Enough To Know Better is a classic sounding Lloyd Cole song with Neil Clark’s steel guitar giving it a country feel. Another Lover and 39 Down are jangly, more uptempo country rock songs, albeit loaded with regret.

Cover versions are the last refuge of the scoundrel, and Lloyd Cole has never been terribly comfortable in this territory. After the pretty instrumental Sunburst, Etc serves up not one, but two cover versions. Karen Black’s Memphis features backing vocals from The The’s Matt Johnson with a wonderful performance from the band. Even Lloyd Cole’s countrified attempt at Bob Dylan’s You’re A Big Girl Now fares well with great twangy guitars.

The country influence continues throughout the album, perhaps at its strongest on Alright People, another strong song on an album full of them. After another brief instrumental, Santa Cruz, the quality doesn’t let up with the stomping Love Like This Can’t Last, and the highly likeable Went To Woodstock, Fool You Are and the harmonica-led Weakness.

Special mention to Lloyd’s voice on this album, he’s not affected or strained, but utterly natural, which works really well here. What’s great about all these songs is that they all sound so effortless, almost carefree, when by all accounts at the time, their creator was clearly not. An essential album for Lloyd Cole fans.