Back at Union Chapel almost one year (save for a week) after the Michael Nesmith gig. The venue is definitely one of the nicest in London and is particularly well suited for solo singer songwriter gigs (Nick Lowe is playing a solo show there next march). Apart from a short reunion tour with The Commotions in 2004 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Rattlesnakes, Cole has been playing solo shows whether promoting new albums, archive releases or touring for the sake of it. I first saw him in 2009 in a small venue in Vienna called Cafe Szene. He had just released the 2 Folksingers LP's showcasing the solo performances he'd been doing for the past decade and a boxset of Out of print and unreleased songs called "Cleaning Out The Ashtrays". I remember a fine gig with a fine performance from Lloyd that was maybe missing a little bit in spontaneity in the interaction with the audience (some of the jokes are repeated from the live CD's) but that could be linked to the fact that the audience wasn't made up of English speakers. The songs were performed flawlessly though without as missed note in the whole set. Fast forward 3 years and Lloyd was touring Europe again but this time promoting a new album "Broken Record" and was touring with 2 guitar players (Matt Cullen and Mark Schwaber) billed as "The Small Ensemble". I had the chance to see that line-up playing in Rennes and again the gig was a flawless, perfect singing from LLoyd, immaculate guitar playing from all three. The set-list could have used a few more up-tempo numbers but a very good gig by all accounts.
Which leads back at Union Chapel where Lloyd is playing solo again on the back of the release of his "Standards" LP. The gig sold out in July (maybe thanks to all the "return to form, best album since Rattlesnakes" reviews in the press) and another London date was announced for January 2014 but this time with a backing band. The show was pretty similar in format to the ones I had seen before. It was divided in 2 sets with a 30 mins break in the middle. There was quite a few tracks of Rattlesnakes (Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken, Perfect Skin, Forest Fire, 2CV). I was expecting more songs from "Standards" but Lloyd said that we would need to come to the full band show in January to hear most of the songs. We got a cover of "Chelsea Hotel" originally written and sung by Leonard Cohen. Lloyd seemed pleased with the audience reacted to the show (incredibly quiet by London standards) and even though he kept complaining about grooves on the tip of his fingers, his playing didn't suffer from it.
