Now That is Perfect Skin: Lloyd Cole in concert March 2002 (All About Music)

Member Name: ShoppingGirl

Product:	All About Music
Date:	04/03/02 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Melodic, beautiful, spine tingling.

Disadvantages: Irritating, pretentious, sneering.

Ever been totally flummoxed by the categories here on dooyoo? I just have. No Lloyd Cole. No Perfect Skin. No Rattlesnakes - not so much as a Brand New Friend.

I did search but I'll just have to go right on ahead and insult this mans genius by slotting his gig review into the hilariously named 'music in general in general' category! Sorry Lloyd...

OK, so why the hell did I give up my Sunday night to sit in a church pew in Edinburgh's charming but chilly Queens Hall and listen to an old has been that never was? Well, firstly I'll be honest with you and admit I got the tickets for nothing via a competition in our local paper. Hurrah! I am a winner! Felt good, I can tell you.

And secondly, I have loved this mans work since I was fifteen years old and (illegally!) taped my brother's Rattlenakes LP and played it to death in my bedroom. In those days of course Lloyd Cole was never without his Commotions, who appear to have now melted away or indeed gone to cause commotions elsewhere. Throughout the course of his gig last night, Lloyd ( I think it's OK if I just call him Lloyd, especially as he himself refers to David Bowie as 'David'!!) kept us up to date with various snippets of goss about his ex band. Apparently they are all doing well, and one of them has only this week become a new father. Aww!

So what has happened in the intervening fifteen years? I won't bore you with my own life story, but in the interests of topicality I'll tell you what I know of Lloyd's news. Well, he has now been married for twelve years, and has two kids. You won't have seen him traipsing round Ikea though, for the simple reason that he now lives in New England, USA.

He continues to have success with his songwriting career but I'm picking up a vibe that tells me he has yet to hit the high of his older, best known work (Rattlesnakes, Easy Pieces etc).

I can also tell you that Lloyd i
s keen for us to know that he has a new album out soon, it's called 'Etcetera'. And it's ok, but it's not fantastic. Sorry.

Right so here goes with the real review...

So we turned up at the Queens Hall at the appointed hour (at our age fashionable lateness doesn't seem attractive - we'd have hated to miss the support act) and had a beer in the bar/ cafe place. Nice, civilised - not really comparable to my old memories of live bands playing the Glasgow Barrowlands in my youth, but atmospheric all the same.

We sat in our appointed seats (thought this only happened at the cinema?!) and soon the lights dimmed for the support to come on. It wasn't a band, just one guy called Brian Devlin from an Irish band called The Devlins - him and his brother, apparently. He played about six songs with just his own acoustic guitar for accompanyment - and I can honestly say he was awesome. His songs were all sad, melodic little numbers - heavy on love, angst and 'what might have been'. Reminded me of David Gray a bit. He has a lovely, lilting singing voice - yet he was confident, and bantered cheerfully with the ageing crowd.

(a quick peep at the Devlins website informs me they are just teetering on the brink of global success, having worked with world class musicians and been featured on 'Dawsons Creek'!)

Look out for their song 'Snowbirds', about taking your loved one on holiday. It's wonderful.

And then it was time for the master to take his place on stage. I expected him to swagger out, all arrogance and floppy hair. To my surprise, he swaggered out, all arrogance and gray number two all over - well, I guess a floppy fringe doesn't really work with a bald patch and salt 'n pepper hair.

He picked up his guitar and strummed straight into.... a song I don't know. It was good though, and I just find Lloyd's voice to be so deep and spine-tingly, I w
as immediately rapt.

He thanked us for our applause, and then started in with some of the good natured chat that he kept up all night, making us all feel like we were in his front room and he was just this once being totally candid.

Then it was straight into... umm, another song I don't know.

This was how the evening went. Chat, song, chat, song.

After about six songs that I had never heard before, Lloyd started playing the intro to 'Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken' and the crowd burst into a spontaneous and exhilharated 'Stars in their Eyes' type of recognition hysteria. I was the most hysterical! It was magical. It brought back so many memories - and to my amazement, I remembered every word of every line.

I sang along! My eyes were wet, and I was honestly shivering with pleasure. Clearly, the rest of the audience felt the same. We all just came alive at that point.

But... if Lloyd picked up on this, he didn't allow it to influence his subsequent choice of songs. It was back to his new and un-famous stuff, with a Leonard Cohen cover and a Lou Reed cover thrown in for good measure.

Which is fine I suppose. But I didn't sit up and take notice again after that, and to be honest, the songs have now all merged into one in my memory. They are all about the pain of love, the reality of getting older, unfulfilled dreams etc. And if I'm brutally honest, without any kind of backing musicians, the tunes all blended into each other too.

Lloyd showed loads of very endearing self mocking humour throughout, which made me love him. He slagged off his older, pretentious lyrics (and then sang new pretentious ones) and even layed into Keith Richards for being all glamour and no talent!!

But I had turned up for one reason only and that was to have my spine tingled with his awesome back catalogue of hum-along hit tunes. Perfect Skin, Brand New Friend, Rattlesnakes etc. Llo
yd just wouldn't deliver.

At one point he answered a heckler from the audience who demanded to hear the old stuff by saying 'I am a songwriter you know, and I have a right to perform my new work' - !!!
Umm, Lloyd? Hello?? These people have not paid fifteen quid each to hear your middle aged moanings sung to a ripped off Cohen tune. THEY WANT PERFECT SKIN!!

In the encore he submitted (clearly doing us a biiig favour) and did Lost Weekend and Forest Fire. But by then he was tired, we were tired, and it was time to think about the journey home. He didn't do either track justice, and my singing along was half hearted. Two hours of unfamiliar dad rock had drained me.

What can I say to sum up? I still love Lloyd Cole - I was straight onto the internet this morning to order his 'Collection' album (8.99 at cdwow.com) and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I wouldn't, however, massively recommend his new album. It's ok, but as I said, it's not fantastic.

Nobody does moody cool like Lloyd Cole, but middle age has turned arrogance into bitterness. His voice remains the same - deep, sexy and totally memorable (Will Young, read it and weep) but without those hits of our youth, we felt so cheated.

Come back Lloyd. British music needs your voice, your charisma, your stuck-up intelligence.

And play us the goddamn hits!

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