Standards

Description

Lloyd Coles new album Standards on Tapete Records was recorded in late 2012 /early 2013 in Los Angeles, New York and at his home in Easthampton, Massachusetts, Standards is produced by Lloyd and mixed by maverick German producer Olaf Opal. All songs are by Lloyd Cole apart from California Earthquake, which was written by American folk artist John Hartford.

Inspired in part by the vitality he found in septuagenarian Dylans acclaimed 2012 album Tempest says Cole, 52: I took it as a kick up the backside Standards is a gloriously electric rocknroll record and arguably the best thing he has made since his groundbreaking debut with the Commotions, 1984s Rattlesnakes.

The band Lloyd assembled for Standards comprises Fred Maher (Material, Scritti Politti, Lou Reed) on drums and Matthew Sweet on bass reforming the rhythm section from Lloyds debut solo album 1990s Lloyd Cole and its follow up 91s Dont Get Weird On Me Babe. With Joan (As Police Woman) Wasser on piano/backing vocals, and Lloyd not only singing but playing synths amidst some of the crispest, stormiest, most stinging electric guitar, its a tight ship with a tight sound which tautens and relaxes according to the temper of the song. Augmenting the basic band are Mark Schwaber, Matt Cullen and Lloyds son Will on guitars, Commotions keyboardist Blair Cowan, percussionist Michael Wyzik and backing vocalist and Negative Dave Derby.

Says Lloyd: I wanted to make an album with a small fixed palette of sounds, like a Van Gogh, like Highway 61. The format is supposedly dead, but I still want to make albums. Not bunches of songs albums. For the last 10 years Ive been primarily an acoustic musician but this is an album for electric guitars, electric bass and loud drums, with piano and a synthesizer for measure. Not quite monochrome, then, but not ever-changing either: it has a sound.