{"id":7638,"date":"2015-04-20T05:30:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T09:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=7638"},"modified":"2024-10-14T11:22:55","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:22:55","slug":"lloyd-cole-standards-and-deviation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/04\/20\/lloyd-cole-standards-and-deviation\/","title":{"rendered":"Lloyd Cole: Standards and Practices, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions<\/strong> debuted onto the music scene in the 1980s, a period that dovetailed nicely with my college years. Their debut Rattlesnakes<\/em> came out in 1984, and Mainstream<\/em>, their third and last album (not counting posthumous live and compilation sets) was released in 1987. Cole went on to a highly regarded solo career, releasing ten albums of new music between 1990 and 2010. His eleventh studio release, Standards<\/em>, was released in the UK and Europe in 2013, and in 2014 Omnivore Recordings released the album in the USA.<\/p>\n

Concurrent with \u2013 but not strictly in support of \u2013 Standards<\/em>, Cole mounted a series of live solo dates. \u201cI don’t feel that I’m really out here supporting an album,\u201d Cole says. \u201cI’m just letting people know that I’m still here.\u201d That tour brought him through Asheville NC in late March. I attended the lightly-populated (but well received) show, and met Cole for drinks and conversation afterward. We quickly discovered that we’re both serious music fans (and fans of serious music), and as a result our time together was less an interview than a freewheeling conversation.<\/p>\n

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We discussed the evening’s show and its light turnout. \u201cAm I wrong? This town has got something of a modern hippie-punk feel to it,\u201d he observed. \u201cWhich is not really my audience.\u201d He related a quick account of a lunchtime stroll he had taken through town earlier in the day. \u201cOn that particular walk,\u201d he chuckled, \u201cI saw examples of stereotypes, people who I knew<\/em> would not be interested in my music.\u201d He noted that he lives in Northampton Massachusetts, a place \u201cwith a similar vibe,\u201d but smiled wanly as he recalled becoming \u201cfilled with loathing\u201d and dread about the evening’s show. But then he walked into a popular and informal local eatery, looked around, and thought, \u201cThese are my people. This will be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole wasn’t being flippant; the people he first encountered \u2013 a small but vaguely menacing lot of semi-homeless types dressed in ragged military fatigues \u2013 do indeed give off a certain vibe, and not one of them did in fact come to The Grey Eagle for Cole’s engaging one-man performance. It’s fair to say that those who attended the show really enjoyed it. And Cole agreed with that assessment. \u201cIt was a nice gig. It was a little bit more spontaneous show than my normal ones, because I usually play two sets.\u201d This one-off paired Cole on the bill with Peter Mulvey<\/strong>. \u201cThis is the only show we’re doing together,\u201d Cole said. \u201cWe’ve never met before. He’s a nice guy. I’m kind of glad I went on before him,\u201d Cole said. \u201cBecause his guitar playing is…he’s much more of a musician<\/em> than me. I’m more of a songwriter.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Cole’s leading, our conversation quickly turned to an abiding interest of his, one I had no idea was part of his musical makeup. \u201cMake Noise is located here in Asheville,\u201d he said. \u201cThey’re a synth company founded by a guy called Tony Rolando<\/strong>, who used to work for Moog Music\u201d [also in Asheville]. The company hand-builds synthesizer modules and systems for the serious musician and hobbyist alike. \u201cThey’re an amazing company, and world-renowned,\u201d Cole said. But what, I wondered, does that have to do with a transplanted Briton who sings his songs while (mostly) playing an acoustic guitar?<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been making music with modular synths for the last three or four years,\u201d Cole told me. \u201cThere’s a tiny, tiny bit of modular synth on Standards<\/em>, too. And I visited Moog and got a Moog guitar the last time I was here,\u201d he said. \u201c’Period Piece’ has modular synth and Moog guitar on it. But the record I’m working on making next will have a lot more of both.\u201d<\/p>\n

I mischaracterized his albums prior to Standards<\/em> as mostly acoustic. \u201cThey weren’t really acoustic,\u201d Cole replied. \u201cThey were just quiet. And they weren’t even all that quiet, at times. They just weren’t electric rock records. Standards<\/em> is the first electric rock record I’ve made since Negatives<\/em> in 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy? I just wrote some songs that needed to be treated this way,\u201d he said. \u201cThe choice I had was either discard these songs and make quiet music, or I follow the lead of the songs.\u201d For awhile, Cole expected the resulting album would be \u201chalf loud and half quiet.\u201d But he contacted Fred Maher<\/strong> and Matthew Sweet<\/strong> (\u201cthey had played on my first two solo records in the late ’80s, early 90s\u201d), telling them, \u201cI’m thinking of making this rock record. Would you be interested in playing on it?\u201d Happily, both said yes. Standards<\/em> was cut in Los Angeles, since both Maher and Sweet live there. \u201cI got into a groove, finishing writing the songs for the album,\u201d Cole said. \u201cKnowing that I was going to be working with them \u2013 knowing what kind of record I’m making \u2013 seems to influence my songwriting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d Cole said, in the end, \u201cwhat I thought was going to be an album of half quiet, half loud songs turned out to be loud and slightly-less-loud.\u201d Cole reflected on the development of the album that would become Standards<\/em>. \u201cI had ten weeks to get all of the songs finished. And I knew I had to finish, because once I got to L.A., I would have to be the producer as well as the singer. And it’s just a nightmare to be the producer when you haven’t finished writing the songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

That restriction affected the creative process. \u201cI decided, I’m not making any demos for this record,\u201d Cole said. \u201cI’m just going to finish [writing] the songs, and then present the songs to Fred and Matthew. And then the three of us will figure out how to do them.\u201d The approach yielded a collection of finished songs that have an energetic, band-oriented feel. \u201cBasically what I did every morning was say to them, ‘Listen to this. I want it to be as insistent as this.’ I made them listen to Neu!<\/strong> every morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click to continue<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions debuted onto the music scene in the 1980s, a period that dovetailed nicely with my college years. Their debut Rattlesnakes came out in 1984, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,49,62],"tags":[1335,1622],"class_list":["post-7638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-krautrock","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-lloyd-cole","tag-omnivore-recordings","cat-41-id","cat-43-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28375,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions\/28375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}