Artist: Lloyd Cole Album: Standards Bitrate: 244kbps avg Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz Label: Tapete Records Genre: Rock Size: 76.45 megs PlayTime: 0h 41min 22sec total Rip Date: 2013-06-22 Store Date: 2013-06-21 Track List: -------- 01. California Earthquakes 3:49 02. Women's Studies 4:12 03. Period Piece 3:27 04. Myrtle and Rose 5:19 05. No Truck 2:52 06. Blue Like Mars 4:19 07. Opposites Day 4:16 08. Silver Lake 2:42 09. It's Late 3:12 10. Kids Today 2:56 11. Diminished Ex 4:18 Release Notes: -------- Dark arts aside, a rebirth is in essence unexpected. Just ask Lloyd Cole, who back in September of last year had not an inkling of the burst of songwriting creativity that was to be unleashed upon him. Asked by Salon.com to review the new Bob Dylan album Tempest, Cole was prepared to pen a respectful apology after an afternoon of mild disappointment. But that isnÆt what happened. ôItÆs not the best record heÆs ever made, but it has an inspirational vibrancy that is astonishing for someone at that age. 72! I took it as a kick up the backside. IÆd been languishing. Some years I wouldnÆt even write a song. But when I heard that record, I thought, Damn! IÆve got all these notebooks full of ideas. What would happen if I just worked on them bloody hard and made a record?ö The answer is his new album Standards, arguably the best thing he has made since his groundbreaking debut with the band the Commotions, 1984Æs Rattlesnakes. For the last 10 years Lloyd has pursued a quieter path not least on his last album 2010Æs folk-country-styled Broken Record. Where that fine album presents the acoustic, wooden Lloyd, his new album Standards is gleamingly, brazenly electric. Never more than on Standards, electric Lloyd has always tapped into New York rockÆs electricity grid, from Dylan æ65 through Television Æ77 to Lou ReedÆs high-tension æ80s classics The Blue Mask and New York. Playing drums on the last-named, Fred Maher is reunited for Standards with bassist Matthew Sweet to form the rhythm section that kept time on LloydÆs debut solo album 1990Æs æLloyd ColeÆ and its follow up æ91Æs æDonÆt Get Weird On Me BabeÆ. With Joan (As Police Woman) Wasser on piano/backing vocals, and Lloyd not only singing but playing synths amidst some of the crispest, stormiest, most stinging electric guitar, itÆs a tight ship with a tight sound which tautens and relaxes according to the temper of the song. Augmenting the basic band are Mark Schwaber, Matt Cullen and LloydÆs son Will on guitars, Commotions keyboardist Blair Cowan, percussionist Michael Wyzik and backing vocalist and Negative Dave Derby. ôI wanted to make an album with a small fixed palette of sounds, like a Van Gogh, like Highway 61, I like a record to have a sound. The format is supposedly dead, but I still want to make albums. Not bunches of songs - albums. With the technology available today you can have any sound you want and you can easily get sidetracked. For the last 10 years IÆve been primarily an acoustic musician but on this album thereÆs only one acoustic guitar. This is an album for electric guitars, bass and drums, with some piano and a synthesizer. Not monochrome, then, but not ever-changing either: it has a sound.ö ôWhen I was conceiving these songs from the ideas in my notebooks, I realised that at least half of them were rockÆnÆroll, something I thought belonged to my past. But I believe you should allow the songs to be boss, and the songs were saying, You need to make a rock record ù or at least a pop record with a rockÆnÆroll band. But what of the songs? Standards starts with the albumÆs only cover, æCalifornia EarthquakeÆ which Lloyd first heard as sung by Mama Cass and had thought was written by fellow Mama And The Papa John Phillips until being informed by a fan that it was a 1971 obscurity from the pen of John Hartford, the folkie who most famously wrote the Glen Campbell hit æGentle On My MindÆ. Correlating the earthquake that did indeed shake California in 1971 with forebodings of emotional or even psychological rupture, it sets the tone for Standards. ôIÆm a worst case scenario person, it seems. IÆve been writing these wretched songs for the longest time, maybe supposing they would immunise the author from the scenarios they relate, like a St Christopher medal. If I sing about it, then I canÆt let it happen, can I?ö Of course, Lloyd would never be so simplistic as to write a song that offered nothing more than a projection of his worst fears. ôI like to leave my songs open so people find their own ways to understand them.ö Yet LloydÆs long-standing techniques divide opinion. Though he dropped out of college to pursue his musical career, there is hardly a better-read, well-versed connoisseur of music, books and movies. ôIÆm torn between the campus library and The New York Dolls. My old friend Robert Quine maintained the word æmoronicÆ as a term of approval, and on my first record I narrated a song about someone who was too well-read, too analytical to feel things authentically. So IÆm aware of the logical conundrum of my chosen career.ö ôIt all started with Gershwin and Louis Armstrong, but then Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Ray Davies, Paul Simon, Bowie and Prince made it clear that you can achieve a lot within the popular arts by blurring the line between high and low culture. I find that exciting in the same way that The Godfather is exciting ù a fantastic work of art for everybody, not just for people who visit museums. IÆm trying to make music that everyone can appreciate.ö The most cursory listen to Standards unearths lyrical nods to Blondie, Iggy Pop, Billie Jo Spears, Nick Cave, the Stones and, of course, Dylan, as well as musical quotes from Television and U2. ôItÆs a tic, sometimes I donÆt notice IÆm doing it. I think of what T.S. Eliot and Picasso said about genius stealing. If you have your own voice, it will put its imprint on what you take and make it your own. ôI remain attracted to cultural references: they can put so much into a song in just a few words.ö Yet the inspirational well-springs of a Lloyd Cole song are far from what is revealed on the surface, æWomenÆs StudiesÆ, for example. ôI recall watching Jools Holland interviewing Miles Davis on The Tube TV show. Miles was in amazing form but he didnÆt want to talk about music but about his paintings, all of which seemed to be of his wife, from behind. So I took the phrase æWomenÆs StudiesÆ, maybe inspired my Miles, and I just had fun with it... and along the way I was able to mine some authentic memories of when I was young and occasionally debauched.ö ôI used to think there was a big difference between a poet and a songwriter, but I donÆt anymore. ItÆs really the same thing. If Byron was alive today, heÆd be a songwriter.ö Like Byron an English Midlander with a Scottish connection, Lloyd, like many Scots songwriters, has always looked West across the Atlantic for inspiration rather than South to England. ôI certainly feel my work has more in common with American folk music than æJerusalemÆ, thatÆs for sure. So much of the art, music and literature I loved came from New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The first time the Commotions toured the US, I went with two suitcases, one of them empty, and it came back full of books and records. ôSinging these songs makes me feel like the guy I was in my late twenties. Only when I look in the mirror or run upstairs do I realise my actual age. My basic aesthetic hasnÆt changed that much, just developed as youÆd hope it would growing older.ö Now that heÆs made Standards, what next? ôI feel encouraged. I feel I could continue making records as long as I want to.ö Lloyd Cole has released 12 studio albums including three with The Commotions and one with The Negatives and has just released an ambient collaboration with Krautrock titan Hans Joachim Roedelius entitled Selected Studies Vol. 1. Standards will be released in June 2013.