A Minimally Brighter Side of Lloyd
James Carragher | New York | 06/29/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Having cheerfulness break out in a Lloyd Cole CD is about as likely as having it break out in a Leonard Cohen work. But just as LC has taken to admitting on his version of the NeverEnding Tour that it does keep breaking out, even in the bleakest of moments, here too we have Lloyd in some cheerful moments. It's not constant and it's certainly not for always, but it is nonetheless clearly there. See, for example, Woman in a Bar, New York City Sunshine, I Didn't See It Coming, an, especially, Every Song, where happy is almost a theme.
This CD also establishes Lloyd in retrospect as the first prophet of the 2008 financial apocalypse -- "Fortune hits the wall/And the whole 500 fall/How wrong can you be?/How wrong can you be?"
Otherwise, it's the same Lloyd from Rattlesnakes days with the Commotions -- reliably musical, intelligent, and genially gloomy and resigned, the Eeyore of Pop. I've always liked him and most likely always will."