LIVE REVIEW : LLOYD COLE AND THE LEOPARDS AT SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE 31/01/2013

Following the good reception of the recently released Standards and a sold out solo gig at Union Chapel last October, Lloyd Cole was back in the UK for a short tour with a 5 piece band (first band shows since the short tour he did with The Commotions to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of Rattlesnakes in 2004). The core of the band was Glasgow garage rock outfit The Leopards. I must admit I've had troubles finding anything about them on the web. Most of them seem to be veterans of the Glasgow music scene of the nineteen eighties. Lead guitar player Mick Slaven was a member of Del Amitri for a short while, bass player Campbell Owens played in Aztec Camera, drummer Jim Gash is Australian born but has played in Glasgow bands since the mid eighties, Douglas MacIntyre the second guitar player was the head honcho of the label Creeping Bent and Blair Cowan was the keyboard player in The Commotions and has been working on and off with Cole ever since.

The Band first appearance was on Later with Jools Holland last October performing Myrtle And Rose and Women Studies from Standards and Perfect Skin from Rattlesnakes. Considering the band had just had a couple of days to rehearse before appearing on the show the performance was pretty impressive. Friday night's show was however at a different level, instead of sounding like a bunch of hired hands assembled in a short period of time, the band displayed a cohesiveness betraying its recent formation and revealed itself to be the perfect match for Lloyd Cole's music.

Coming on stage at 9pm to the sound of Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken by Camera Obscura, the band launched straight away into a note perfect rendition of Rattlesnakes with the three guitars adding a "rockier" to the song compared to the version on the Rattlesnakes LP. Great care was put in the elaboration of the set list with almost every album of Cole's career covered (I think only Bad Vibes and Antidepressant weren't covered). Almost one third of the Set list was devoted to Commotions songs with most of the well known ones getting an airing (Rattlesnakes, Perfect Skin, Lost Weekend, Jennifer She Said...). The songs from Standards blended seamlessly in the Set list, proving that the excellent reviews the new album received were well deserved. If I had to choose my favourites in the tunes played I would go for the excellent versions of What's Wrong With This Picture from The Negatives album and Like Lovers Do from Love Story, the later one featuring particularly nice guitar lines from Mick Slaven that differed quite a bit from the ones on the recorded version. Though clearly enjoying himself, Lloyd Cole seemed a bit self conscious fronting a rock band after ten years of touring in solo folk mode. He made quite a few references to ageing in between songs even joking at some point that we would be better off closing our eyes so we could all be in 1984 again. Lloyd said that this might be the last time we saw him with a band, let's hope it's an "au revoir" rather than an "adieu" as the French would say.

LIVE REVIEW : LLOYD COLE AT UNION CHAPEL 17/10/2013

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.