CD review

Lloyd Cole
‘Music in a Foreign Language’

While English singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole has been planning this fall’s 20th anniversary concerts with his former band The Commotions, his latest solo album has been quietly released in his adopted homeland of America — a year after it was issued abroad. Better late than never, as “Music in a Foreign Language” continues the singer/songwriter’s string of impressive, if largely ignored, discs.

Apart from the contented family life depicted in “Cutting Out,” the album is decidedly downbeat both in music and tone. Cole covers Nick Cave’s “People Ain’t No Good” and then goes the troubadour of darkness one better on his own harrowing “My Other Life,” a first person crime tale that's creepy in what it reveals and more so in what it doesn't.

The album is clearly informed by Cole's recent treks around the globe performing solo acoustic shows (if only he'd do one here!). Each track is built around simple guitar arpeggios or strumming with occasional piano or percussion thrown in for texture. Thus the focus lands squarely upon Cole's literate lyrics and world-weary voice which is where he truly shines.

Whether painting visual pictures (“Lying here between your progeny and your Visa card statement beside the coffee-stained torn envelope”) or articulating painful doubt (“Didn’t I promise always to shelter and protect you? Didn’t I answer ‘Yes, I do?’ Well, today I’m not so sure”) Cole is a master. This is pop for adults by an adult and if that’s “music in a foreign language,” so be it. It sounds gorgeous.

Two other Cole CDs — “Etc.,” a terrific rock album and “Plastic Wood,” a rather slight all-instrumental disc — are available for the first time domestically. All are in stores now. A

— by Thomas Bond, Get Out