322) Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Mainstream

Post marriage split my friends, and I used to meet on a Friday night in a social club before we properly hit the pubs where we would have a couple of cheap pints a couple of games of pool and take advantage of a decent jukebox. I reckon without fail Jennifer She Said was played every time we were in there with the line “maybe we you were a little hasty” sung with great gusto by my friends every week to celebrate my extremely short unsuccessful marriage. Yes, guess my ex-wife’s name? What can you do but laugh at yourself and I wouldn’t expect anything else from lifelong friends. Listening back now it’s a great pop single and I guess will always hold a special memory.

The problem for Lloyd Cole & the Commotions is they made a near perfect debut album in Rattlesnakes and everything they subsequently released was unfairly compared to it.

Mainstream, the bands last album, did not sell as many as the previous two and I seem to remember reviews not being exactly being full of praise at the time but listening back nearly forty years later, it is an excellent record, its just sadly the UK record buying public, wrongly, had moved on, maybe the band members had as well.

 The album opens with lead single My Bag where the band are on a funk  groove, back then I loved it and still do, great chorus and From the Hip is sophisticated pop, beautifully sung and when he sings “I don’t care anymore,” I wholeheartedly disagree I couldn’t be in more.  29 reminds me of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy, just me?

Mr Malcontent is an excellent song from start to finish and when the guitar solo comes in the band and Lloyd excel, timeless pop and then we have Sean Penn Blues where I am sucked in by the harmonica.

If you are going to go out, then go out on a high and the band manage that with Hey Rusty a catchy undercurrent of a tune and These Days is achingly beautiful.

Just to clarify I do have a few tattoos but thankfully not one with the ex-wife’s name, I am stupid but not that stupid.

7.5/10

GIVE IT A STREAM: Mr Malcontent