Lloyd Cole
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, January 21, 2025
It takes a brave man to front up to a guttural Glasgow accent emanating from a shadowy hinterland and demanding their favourite song. “We don’t know how to play it,” replies Lloyd Cole, having already explained that he is “definitely far too old” to sing 1985’s Lost Weekend. There’s a menacing growl: “Just have a go.” Most folk would crumble, but not Cole, who instead leads his band into a track from 2023’s On Pain, The Idiot. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to deal with a heckler.
Not that there are many of those tonight, the Englishman being back in “home” territory, the city that found space to launch such disparate talents as The Commotions, The Blue Nile and The Jesus & Mary Chain in the space of a few months in 1984. Was it really 41 years ago? In the centre of town, at the Street Level gallery, there is an exhibition of rock photography that features a wall of Scottish successes - including those three bands - as captured by Sheila Rock. Four decades on, Cole’s voice may barely have altered, but compare the portrait with the man onstage and … well, The Picture Of Dorian Gray this ain’t.
But Cole never really was one of the young ones; by the time he was 22 his voice cracked with weariness and his eyes dreamt of a Leonard Cohen-style maturity, aware the pop machine was a carousel he had to go around to reach the venerable veteran status of which he was worthy. By his own admission now too old for a lost weekend, then, he looks well on it, a silver fox wearing a cream suit and still carrying the air of a slightly frustrated English teacher, the sort who might whip a student into shape with the line “Baby, you’re too well read”.
Behind him, on drums is Signy Jakobsdottir; on either side of him are Blair Cowan (keyboards) and Neil Clark (guitars), two former Commotions, both wearing glasses, their hair now focused on chins rather than scalps. Not that this is relevant, of course, but with so many of Cole’s songs referencing age (“Life seems never ending when you’re young”, “because you’re young you know there’s nothing you can do”, “no longer young” …), it’s another reminder of how much water has flowed under the bridge since tonight’s audience first swooned to Rattlesnakes.
And swoon once again they do in 2025, with six songs from the Commotion’s majestic debut featured, including the title track, Perfect Skin and, closing the first and second halves respectively, Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken? and Forest Fire, the biggest cheers of the night.
With such illustrious songs to pick from, the sections of the crowd that have very definite favourites from that initial LP may give short shrift to attempts to entertain them with songs from the band’s two subsequent albums (there are three from Easy Pieces, and only one from Mainstream - time constraints result in the title track being cut from the scheduled encore). Much of the two-hour show comes from Cole’s solo career, though, which it would be diplomatic to say may have flown under the radar of those hoping to hear all (and only) the hits. Underlining this situation, he tells of a date on last year’s solo tour during which a song was introduced from 2006’s Antidepressant, “my least successful album”, only for a voice from the stalls to add: “So far.”
There are more than enough unsung reasons here, however, to demonstrate why Cole should be feted as one of the best songwriters of the past 50 years. The Young Idealists never seemed more topical (“Then we bought into the neocon economic dream/And we were trading in futures we believed in”); Nightsweats, from the surprisingly experimental diversion into electronica that is 2019’s Guesswork, possesses an uncanny sense of optimistic desperation (“If you hold me close, we just might make it till morning”); The Over Under suggests Clark has probably heard Marquee Moon; and Cole's mother’s favourite song, Myrtle And Rose, with its bittersweet “The longer you were gone, the less the longing” refrain, even allows its creator a chance to show off his own guitar chops. If you want to know what Cole has been doing since turning his back on pop stardom, start there.
And yet, your correspondent can’t help thinking about Lost Weekend, and the brokenhearted fan sitting in a sandstone tenement in Glasgow in the wee small hours after the show, playing their single over and over, having waiting since 1985 to hear it in concert. Perhaps there is a compromise all parties could consider for the coming year: a 40th anniversary tour of Easy Pieces, with Cole handing over vocal duties to the crowd on their favourite, the biggest hit he has penned … so far.
SETLIST
Wolves
Don’t Look Back
Trigger Happy
On Pain
No More Love Songs
Why I Love Country Music
2cv
Undressed
Warm By The Fire
Rattlesnakes
Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?
Past Imperfect
Night Sweats
Speedboat
Blue Like Mars
Minor Character
The Young Idealists
Woman In A Bar
The Over Under
No Blue Skies
Perfect Blue
Perfect Skin
Myrtle And Rose
The Idiot, Brand New Friend
Forest Fire
Encore:
Jennifer She Said
Pictures: Stuart McHugh / isthismusic.com