Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart.

[MUSIC - Lloyd Cole: More Of What You Are]

Your skin gossamer thin

The light passes through

No more out of you

Your eyes, dug deeper in your brow

Look only inward now

And your glory

With each passing story

The more glorious

Alison Stewart: You're hearing a song called More Of What You Are from the new album On Pain from Lloyd Cole. It's the singer-songwriter's 12th solo album and, of course, there's his work with Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. A few of his former bandmates joined him on this endeavor which takes advantage of synthesizers which gives the album an electronic texture alongside Cole's smart songwriting. Don't worry, there are guitars, too.

NPR music journalist Ann Powers called the new record, "A well-calibrated mix of fleshed-out narratives and evocative set pieces," while Paste Magazine says, "The literate lyrics, Cole's expressive voice, his knack for hummable melodies, suggest that he has fully arrived at the next phase in his career." Lloyd Cole joins me now live in studio with his guitar fresh off the Amtrak. Thank you so much for making the effort to get here.

Lloyd Cole: You're very welcome. I needed to do some shopping in the city anyway.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Where and when did you make the record? I ask this because there's people who have made records during the pandemic and they sound one way or after the pandemic in reaction to it.

Lloyd Cole: I don't see the record as a reaction to the pandemic, but it was made primarily during lockdown and then after lockdown. I started it when I got sent home from Gothenburg when the tour was canceled. I got about two months into it and then I ran out of impetus because I realized it wasn't going to pay the mortgage, so I started doing all kinds of cottage industry things out of the house to have to get some money coming in. I lost impetus on the record. Then we went out and we finally rescheduled the shows two years later, and I thought, "Well, I better finish this thing." [laughter] It wasn't really made during the worst of it.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting. Were the songs that were created with all that, like a the big space of time in between, did you have to go back to the original ones and rethink them?

Lloyd Cole: No. I was lucky in terms of the first couple of songs were Wolves and the title track. They came together quite naturally, and they were the songs that made me realize, okay, this could be an album. Then the intervening period, I suppose, I did have my notebooks. I did fill them with lyrics, I just didn't do any recording.

Alison Stewart: When you were filling them with lyrics, was that as an outlet or was it you doing your job as a songwriter?

Lloyd Cole: Doing my job. I think when it comes to writing, the exciting things are the little sparks, the little phrases that you think, "Oh, this could be something," and then, the rest is work and making it into something that's worth using. Using something exciting, the work has to be put in to make it a worthwhile endeavor.

Alison Stewart: It's like when you're learning something you go from 0 to 70. You get really fast and then it's the little increments after.

Lloyd Cole: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: How you get to 100, right?

Lloyd Cole: Yes. [unintelligible 00:03:49] likes to do that, apparently. He likes to learn new instruments to trick himself into writing new things, and I think quite often that is a creative spark when you don't really know what you're doing. When you really know what you're doing it's kind of boring. That's why I feel like I have to make different records because if I make the same one again, I'm just not going to be excited.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Lloyd Cole. The new album is called On Pain. A couple of your mates have joined on the album, Blair Cowan, Neil Clark. What brings you back to working with them?

Lloyd Cole: I never really stopped. The band split up, but we didn't stop being collaborators. Blair collaborated on the first two records I made when I was here. Neil went out on the next tour. We're always sending tapes of ideas to each other. We still call them tapes. [chuckling] They're files now. They both actually worked on the last record, Guesswork, and that was really the spark for this record because that was the first record where I dove deep in with electronic music and singing.

I've done electronic experimental music in the past but integrating songs into that kind of soundscape, it was quite a challenge, and it went really well. In fact, it went so well that our plan was, okay, next time, let's not just do it all in the internet and you in Toronto and Blair in Glasgow and me here. Let's go to Chris Hughes' house and let's go and make a record quickly like we used to do. Then COVID, [chuckles] so we did it remotely again.

What is strange, and I'm sitting here with a guitar, not one of the songs was written on a guitar. Four of the songs were written by the other guys, and I'm just singing along adding parts. I came to thinking about how am I going to play these songs, and I don't even know what the chords for The Idiot are. [laughter] I had to sit down last week and go, "Okay." Well, Blair's got a weird way describing the chords that he's playing anyway. That has been a fun challenge of being an acoustic performer when you make records that are not acoustic. You have to figure out ways to perform them.

Alison Stewart: That is the perfect segue into you [laughs] playing a song for us.

Lloyd Cole: All right. I don't know what this chord is called, but it's the right one, and it's quite difficult to play.

[strums guitar]

I know that I’m not doing great

But you’re almost translucent

You’ve taken it all too far and it was beautiful

The spirit in your swimming pool

Man, she’s got it in for you

Cherry might just drive on by

Next time you’re turning blue

We’ll move to Berlin

Stop being drug addicts

We’ll cycle and swim

Stop being drug addicts

We’ll rent an efficiency

You’ll wear the serious guise

And I’ll be the idiot

[guitar strumming]

We’ll cycle to the studio

In our jeans and our leg-warmers

We’ll cycle to the discotheque

Then we’ll cycle home

LA is so 1975

We’ve got to get out

How are we still alive?

No more limousines

No more endless white nights

We’ll move to Berlin

Stop being drug addicts

We’ll cycle and swim

Stop being drug addicts

We’ll enter society

You’ll wear the serious guise

And I’ll be the idiot

[guitar strumming]

We’ll find a better speed of life

In the cafes and the galleries

Just a pair of modern guys

Escaping history.

Alison Stewart: That was Lloyd Cole with The Idiot. The modern guys referred to in that song?

Lloyd Cole: Well, they can be whoever you want, but I was thinking about Iggy and Bowie rescuing themselves from LA. I think if they'd stayed there they would have died and so for me, I don't write many sweet songs, but it's a warm song. It's a song about love and redemption, I guess.

Alison Stewart: Why don't you write many sweet songs?

Lloyd Cole: I don't know. I have thought about it. I think it's much more difficult to write joyous songs. I think the language of melancholy is just so much richer and so much easier to use, so maybe I'm lazy. The perfect joyous song for me is Da Do Ron Ron. It says nothing.

Alison Stewart: That's a great song.

Lloyd Cole: Isn't it? It's perfect.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Lloyd Cole. The new album is called On Pain. I actually wanted to play a little bit of one of the tracks now because we were talking about trying to figure out, oh, I have this sort of textured electronic music, how am I going to play it acoustic. I want people to hear what we're talking about. I want to play a little bit of I Can Hear Everything. What would you like people to listen for on this track?

Lloyd Cole: Well, that's probably a lovely example of what I was trying to do on the record in that the vocals are treated with no reverence. They're treated just like any other instrument in the orchestra and so, yes, I'd like to think that the singer is part of the ensemble.

Alison Stewart: Here's I Can Hear Everything from Lloyd Cole's new album On Pain.

[MUSIC - Lloyd Cole: I Can Hear Everything]

I hear the leaf

Fall

I hear the stars

I hear them all

Down

Deep down beneath

I hear Leviticus

And Deuteronomy

As I do nothing

Alison Stewart: That's I Can Hear Everything from Lloyd Cole's new album On Pain. As you could hear from those lyrics and people who know your work, you have decided Truman Capote and Norman Mailer and a little bit of Joan Didion. Are you still a big reader?

Lloyd Cole: No.

Alison Stewart: No.

Lloyd Cole: Not as much. I find myself reading electronic engineering manuals and what have you to try and learn how to make my synthesizers work. I am still reading somewhat. I've become a big fan of audiobooks. I don't really like the radio when I'm driving. [laughter] I like to listen to audiobooks. I've been revisiting some Martyn Amos. Jeremy Irons reading Lolita is pretty much the pinnacle of art in the 20th century. It's as good as it gets.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I can imagine. I can even hear it. Just saying. [laughs]

Lloyd Cole: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned Chris Hughes. People in music know Chris Hughes is, gosh, he's produced Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, and Everybody Wants to Rule the World, co-wrote that. What is it that Chris Hughes helps you do as a performer? How does he help you?

Lloyd Cole: He's been my pal since he came over in '94 to help me get started making a record that ended up being called Love Story. He is the best producer that I'm aware of when it comes to making the artist believe that he's got what it takes to make the record. Self-doubt is absolutely-- Every artist has it. If you don't have self-doubt, I don't think you're an artist.

Chris helps me overcome it. He makes me feel like I'm capable. He's very clever, never asking me to do quite too much at any one time. When we were working on certain tracks on the record he'd say, "Yes, it's just about the there. Maybe we could just try this," and I'd do it. Then the next week, he'll say, "Maybe we could try this." If he had asked me to do all of the suggestions that he made I'd say, "No, that's too much. That's overwhelming," but he very carefully pushes me.

Then when I got over there to Wiltshire to mix the record, for the first four days we're actually recording more stuff. He's great. He's the cleverest person I know in music and he's the funniest person. I love him to bits.

Alison Stewart: That is a great endorsement. You have offered to play a song that is somewhat specific to where we are today, where we physically are today.

Lloyd Cole: We are. When I moved here in '88 I lived on Charlton Street just around the corner from here in between 6th and 7th. Then before I left I wrote a song addressing that first six months when I moved here when I got a little bit excited about everything.

Alison Stewart: Here's Lloyd Cole.

[MUSIC - Lloyd Cole: Tried to Rock]

I tried to rock

I tried to rock, yea

And still I tried to rock

I did not try to fail

I did not fail to see

That what it takes to rock

Is that which I have not

I didn't try for such a long time

I didn't try so very hard

Maybe I could have been more focussed

You know I wasn't even blind

When I tried to rock, yea

I grew my hair

My walls were bare

I had one red wine glass

It was self-fulfilling

I had four girlfriends

No visible means of support

I lived on credit card rye bread

And maybe I should have tried in Memphis

Maybe I should have stayed home

Maybe I should have taken a little something

You know, I wasn't even stoned

When I tried to rock, yea

And if you think I let you down

And if I called you babe

I didn't mean to say that you were just a babe

Although you're such a solid babe

Do do do do

Do do do do do do do do

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.