Lloyd Cole – On Pain (2023) [FLAC 24bit/44,1kHz]

Lloyd Cole – On Pain (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 37:26 minutes | 432 MB | Genre: Pop, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © earMUSIC

Since his days as the leader of The Commotions and his still-mighty 1984 debut album, Rattlesnakes, Lloyd Cole has soldiered on, often swinging between conventional synth pop outings like 2013’s Standards and more experimental electronic albums like 2015’s 1D Electronics 2012-2014. Here, as on his last album, 2019’s Guesswork, he mixes both: lots of synthesizers and digitally-generated sounds to go with familiar melodic paths and common rhythms. Former Commotions keyboardist Blair Cowan co-wrote three of the tracks and their guitar player Neil Clark co-wrote another.Built mostly at his home studio in Western Massachusetts, On Pain—whose sound is typically gleaming with appreciable depth and range—was finished in the UK with producer Chris Hughes (Robert Plant, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard). As subjects go, the concentration of human frailties —occasionally specifically Cole’s—is the ground over which his passionate, self-examining eye travels over again and again. In the repeated lines of “This Can’t Be Happening” Cole concedes that all of what he senses is real and frustratingly unstoppable: “You can’t believe it/ It can’t be possible/ But it’s happening now.” In the title track, over a steady rhythm washed through synth waves, he offers that he can’t be trusted with “money, secrets” nor “loving” but knows that “… you can trust me with your sorrow/ And oh, you can trust me with your pain/ And we will bury them deep down/ We’ll never speak of them again.” A trusty pop bounce drives “Warm by the Fire,” where he harpoons Los Angeles, feeling appropriately alienated by its commercialism: “These are the cards I’m not holding/ This is the state I’m not in/ This is the role I’m not playing/ This is not who I am.” More condemnation of Los Angeles, which is “so 1975,” appears in “The Idiot” which floats along at an easy pace to synth chords and where the narrator pleads, “We’ll move to Berlin/ Stop being drug addicts/ We’ll cycle and swim.” In the closer “The Wolves,” the lens of disgust and worry widens, and over gently undulating synths Cole slowly sings, “You worship false idols/ You love the deceased/ You cower before tyrants/You spread the disease/You lack imagination.”

Cole’s most recent bio pays tribute to wanting to create beauty with his music, “I really don’t like the idea that songs are about things. I like the idea that songs are things.” On Pain succeeds at that. Despite its often anxious lyrics, this is prime Cole: a welcome return, immaculately crafted, and filled with exquisite voyages of emotion. – Robert Baird

Tracklist:

1-01. Lloyd Cole – On Pain (04:01)
1-02. Lloyd Cole – Warm By The Fire (04:07)
1-03. Lloyd Cole – I Can Hear Everything (03:29)
1-04. Lloyd Cole – The Idiot (04:17)
1-05. Lloyd Cole – You Are Here Now (05:02)
1-06. Lloyd Cole – This Can’t Be Happening (04:10)
1-07. Lloyd Cole – More Of What You Are (04:45)
1-08. Lloyd Cole – Wolves (07:33)

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