FILTER REISSUES
Soul dressing
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
How the ’80s turned an earnest student with a passion for Americana into a pop star. By Tom Doyle.
Rattlesnakes
★★★★
Easy Pieces
★★★
Mainstream
★★★
PROPER/UMC. LP
I NTHE mid-1980s, when most of the British music scene was in thrall to synth-pop and looking east to Europe, many in Glasgow looked west to America. As the decade progressed, emerging groups wore their US influences overtly: Deacon Blue (Steely Dan and Bruce Springsteen), Texas (Ry Cooder), Love And Money (Steely Dan again). Even Wet Wet Wet were so devoted to soul traditions that they had a first stab at their debut album in Memphis with Al Green producer Willie Mitchell.
For better or for worse, as an Americana-obsessed English outsider in Glasgow, where he’d gone to study (see Back Story), Lloyd Cole was a forerunner of this trend, making his band The Commotions – guitarist Neil Clark, keyboard player Blair Cowan, bassist Lawrence Donegan and drummer Stephen Ir vine – in the image of Booker T. & The M.G.’s. At the same time, (literally) chiming with The Smiths, he held a strong passion for The Byrds, along with a penchant for arch, bookwormy lyrics that positioned him only a few steps apart from Morrissey and set up Lloyd Cole And The Commotions as the other great student bedsit band of the era.