CD Revue: Lloyd Cole - Music in a Foreign Language

False advertising alert! All the songs are sung in English!

Anyway, you can always count of Lloyd to provide pretty mellow songs, but usually he provides a few up tempo rockier tunes as well. But this album is all lovelorn ballads. Is Lloyd too old to rock even in his shuffling Lloyd Cole way? Maybe. And if that’s the case kudos to him for sticking to what he’s capable of a excelling at and not embarrassing himself by trying to remake Rattlesnakes over and over again. There is only one bona fide classic on the album the sad sad “No More Love Songs”, which starts off with these devastating lines:

“Rather than you,” she said, “I prefer solitude.”
“Rather than company I prefer cigarettes”

That’s just brutal. The rest of the album is great but does quite reach those heights. “People Ain’t No Good” and “Late Night, Early Town” are personal favorites. Lloyd has been doing this for 20 years now and he’s still on the top of his sophisto-pop game.