Lloyd Cole - ‘Antidepressant’
In 1984 I was nineteen years old and heavily into American rock. Springsteen and Mellencamp (still Cougar then) were the artists whose LP’s were wearing out the needle on my record deck.
Yes I said LP’s. This is a tale that starts in ancient times before shiny metal discs and long before music downloads. When PC referred to a police constable and in the office where I worked the only windows were the ones you spent the day staring through while you daydreamed of a less mundane existence, one filled with fast cars, beautiful girls and endless highways.
So a Scottish pop group playing songs with references to the likes of Norman Mailer and Leonard Cohen wasn’t something I’d usually buy. Yet there was something about Lloyd Cole’s laid back, bordering on morose, delivery that appealed to me almost from the minute I heard “Perfect Skin,” the first single from his debut album with the Commotions. I picked up the album on the strength of that single, and the fact that I was intrigued by the title. Rattlesnakes sounded more like something my American rock idols would put out; after all, there weren’t any rattlers in Glasgow.
That album is still one of my all time favourites and while many of the references went over my head at the time (‘she looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront’) his ability to deliver a lyric that could cut with rapier sharpness didn’t (‘must you tell me all your secrets when its hard enough to love you knowing nothing.’) Catchy upbeat pop music with literate lyrics and a downbeat delivery was now the order of the day on my phonograph.
