LLOYD COLE THE SOLO YEARS : 1995

The great solo career many had predicted for Lloyd Cole hadn’t quite worked out as planned. The fall-out from the poorly received and poor-selling Bad Vibes rumbled on into 1994 with no new material made available. It would later transpire that Lloyd was busy writing and demoing new songs but there was very little faith being shown in him by those who had backed him to this point in time.

There were a number of false starts on the next record which can be evidenced on the finished product with five different production credits listed across twelve songs. This would normally be a sign of a disastrous product with the record going through all sorts of gestation periods and being fiddled around with, but somehow Love Story manages to hang together very well and to be a very enjoyable and listenable album.

It is a record in which LC goes back to basics for the most part, uncomplicated tunes with clear vocal delivery and next to no studio trickery. There’s even a couple of radio-friendly numbers included, one of which actually delivered a Top 30 hit in the UK singles chart, a very impressive achievement at a time when Britpop was dominating. The overall tone, however, is one of melancholy and my initial instinct on first hearing it was that someone should try to somehow have LC hook up with Moz as he’d have been a perfect mid-90s foil and between them they could have given us something ridiculously special, albeit Moz would need to have bowed down and allowed Lloyd to pen some of the lyrics.

It had been just over a decade since Rattlesnakes had taken the listening public by storm and it was not long after Edwyn Collins had made marked his great comeback in the public eye with A Girl Like You. There was therefore something of a renewed interest in Lloyd and the first new single certainly lifted the spirits and offered hope that he would again be a major seller:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole – Like Lovers Do

It was A-listed on Radio 1 bringing loads of airplay and back on your television screens again after an extended absence, looking just as suave, handsome and debonair as last time around.

Sadly, the next equally strong single didn’t find as much favour with everyone, missing out on the important listing and bellyflopping at #73:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole – Sentimental Fool

Love Story sold a lot more than Bad Vibes, but not as many as it deserved. It was largely ignored by the music papers and had no chance in the mainstream media who were totally obsessed with the new kids and their electric guitars. It’s an album I reckon would have done incredibly well if social media back in the day had beem more advanced as it was an LP bloggers and the like would have warmed to, given the quality and diversity on display, such as these:

mp3 : Lloyd Cole – Be There
mp3 : Lloyd Cole – Unhappy Song

There were even some superb songs left off the album and made only available as b-sides:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole – I Will Not Leave You Alone
mp3 : Lloyd Cole – The Steady Slowing Down Of The Heart

This surely all pointed to a bigger, brighter future……but the fickle world of pop music doesn’t work that way and instead things got quite messy.

JC