Italy’s largest-circulating daily, La Repubblica, recently featured an interview and performances by the wonderful, durable songwriter Lloyd Cole on its “Music Corner” web feature. Cole preforms solo acoustic renditions of his songs “Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?,” “Music in a Foreign Language,” and the new song “Period Piece,” and weighs in on matters like being bound by genre:

I think my - whatever it is that I have, I think it is quite narrow. I think I can just apply it in different areas. I think I found out, you know, in the early ‘90s. My generation of musicians, we grew up with David Bowie as I think probably the hero for many of us, and every album was different, and every persona was a reinvention. And I think we thought that we all had to do this. And I think around about 1993 I realized that… I’m not David Bowie!

 

 
He also discusses music formats in a way that may make vinyl purists pop a forehead vein:

I think when things change from what you expect, it’s difficult. I grew up with an album being this big, and I dream of being a rock singer, and so I think of what I want to make in terms of this 12-inch/30-centimeter square. And when that changed, I was very unhappy, because I felt that this [CD] size was not so good. But you adapt. I mean, I have no choice. When things go digital I adapt. When the internet becomes important and I have to have a presence on it, I adapt. If I don’t adapt, I die. So we adapt, and you know now? I find the 12-inch vinyl, I find it to be quite a bulbous thing. It’s particularly - because I have an Internet web site now, and I have a web shop, we do a lot of shipping - vinyl is not green! It costs a lot of money to ship it. The little CDs I make now are completely cardboard, and they’re very light. And I think they’re more beautiful.

 

 
You can watch the entire interview here.

Bonus: Cole speaks candidly about his career with Telegraph critic Neil McCormick, shortly after the release of his wonderful (as usual) new album Standards.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Lloyd Cole is a musical genius (and it’s high time that everyone realized it)

 
It must be bloody annoying to be Lloyd Cole and every single damned article written about you for the past two decades mentions that your career never lived up to your talent and potential and that you’re one of the most unheralded singer-songwriters around.

Although both assertions are, well, somewhat true, I’ll dispense with them upfront. I’d blame being ahead of his time and the music industry in general, more than I would anything that this criminally under-rated troubadour has produced (Cole had the bad luck to be caught up in Universal Music’s takeover of Polygram in the mid-90s and his contract was terminated with two unreleased albums locked in their vaults). For me, the music was never in question. If ever there was a middle-aged rocker ripe for rediscovery and critical evaluation, trust this rock snob’s opinion, it’s Lloyd fucking Cole, man. No time like the present, sez me…

We have a songwriting genius in our midst who should be celebrated and yet the guy gets so little respect it’s… well, it’s fucked up. It’s wrong, that’s what it is!

Formed in 1982, the same year as The Smiths, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions broke out of the gate two-years later with a jangly guitar sound that called to mind Orange Juice on their hit single “Perfect Skin.” Philosophy student Cole’s hyper literate—some would say purposefully pretentious—lyrics namechecked the likes of Simone de Beauvoir, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion while painting portraits of complex and idiosyncratic females.

I was totally hooked on the group and will admit to adding “Perfect Skin” to a mixed CD I made for my future wife—who does indeed have perfect skin—when I was courting her (Okay, coming completely clean, I’ve put that song on several mixed tapes and CDs I’ve compiled for women I was courting over the years…but I digress…)

When The Commotions split, Lloyd Cole went solo in New York, recording with the likes of Fred Maher, Matthew Sweet, Anton Fier, Voidoid Robert Quine and one of my dearest friends, Adam Peters—now a Hollywood film composer—who collaborated closely with Cole, although I didn’t know Adam then.

In terms of being “ahead of his time,” Cole was on the Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, Scott Walker tip fairly early on, adding soaring strings (via the great arranger Paul Buckmaster) to what I think is his best album, 1991’s Don’t Get Weird on Me Babe. Other than Nick Cave or Marc Almond, there were few other artists treading into that territory at the time. And his lyrics were as good as Leonard Cohen’s (if not actually better). I cherished this album. Loved it. I played it nonstop for a year.

Apparently, although it is considered his best work, Don’t Get Weird On Me, Babe tanked and caused his American label at the time, Capitol, to drop him. I thought then, and I still think, that it’s a minor masterpiece and one of the very best under-appreciated cult albums of the 90s. (If you’re curious, you can actually buy a copy of Don’t Get Weird on Me Babe for a penny. Trust me, it’s the best cent you’ll ever spend on music).

None of this is to say that Lloyd Cole isn’t still a wonderful and productive working musician today, because he most certainly is. Much of his work during the past decade was in an unplugged acoustic “folk singer” mode, but he’s also gone on tour with a reformed Commotions, formed his “Small Ensemble” band, and performed with one of his sons. Lately he’s been making avant garde electronic music with Cluster’s Hans Joachim Rodelius that was released earlier this year, as Selected Studies Vol. 1.

For my purposes here, though, I’m going to concentrate mainly on the Don’t Get Weird On Me, Babe, Bad Vibes and Love Story era of Cole’s solo work from the early to mid 1990s because those years yielded the best video clips. First up, the lead off track from Don’t Get Weird On Me, Babe, the amazing “Butterfly.” If this song doesn’t blow your mind, then I just don’t know what I can do to help you…
 

 
Much more Lloyd Cole after the jump…