lindy schneider writer, creator, content maker

It is fair to say that if you weren’t fortunate enough to make the connection to Lloyd Coles music in the mid to late 80’s, – anyone remember “Perfect skin” or “Rattlesnakes?” – you may have missed out entirely on his career, which now spans some 3 decades and 15 album releases (and a few more in compilations and slash other).

As a singer song writer, the last 10 years of his career in particular, have been hallmarked by a return to a simplified acoustic approach, as he has taken greater artistic and commercial control over his music. In fact he seems to have skilfully avoided anything other than critical success, his desire to be authentic to his craft, and his long standing fan base, a kind of mantra.

Melbourne greeted him again last night for the fourth time this decade, in a sold out acoustic show in the intimate surrounds of a mid suburban theatre. For well over 2 hours he filled the room with the sweet melancholia of the verses he has penned, ever faithful to each era which has defined his musical journey.

Usually I struggle to find others in my life that know much about Lloyd Cole, so there is something very poignant about sitting in a room with a few hundred other fans who must be as die hard as I, or they wouldn’t know to even be there. There we all were, regarding each other respectfully, as we silently mouth along with the lyrics we know so well – (it’s a little hard to break out at an acoustic gig I’ve discovered!).

His performance is heartfelt, many songs offered with a sense that he is perennially in love with them, but I suspect many of us enjoy the wry and often self deprecating humour the peeps through mid set just as much. As he stumbles on a lyric of a song he has sung, I imagine, thousands of times before, he breaks and says “if you ever saw a concert of me that was flawless, you’d be watching a tribute act.”

Now in his mid 40’s that angst and melancholic disposition that provided the literary fodder in earlier years, has been refined to something that is more reflective and somewhat amused at the plight of middle age. He is open and real, offering personal asides like “As you can see, I am in peak physical condition, about 5-6 kg heavier than I should be, which affords me sufficient self loathing to sing these songs, and padding on which to rest this guitar.”

So I don’t feel so embarrassed that during this week I found myself, like the 15 year old I was, tearing out adverts from the newspaper for Lloyds show. Or that I still have, tucked inside an old album cover, an interview he did with Dolly magazine, way back in the mid 80’s, along side the autograph and photo I had taken with him in 2000, or the VHS tape with two of his film clips I taped from Sounds Unlimited, (a Saturday morning music clip program that defined my teenage years), despite not having a VHS player for at least 15 years.

I am a lover of many genres of music but there is no other artist that has endured my admiration for what is now around 25 years. I guess many others would cite Dylan or Cohen as worthy, and at the risk of sounding like an 80’s hangover, many years later I do still enjoy the music of bands like The Cure or New Order. But this music still carries for me the feeling of my youth, whereas Lloyds music has changed and matured with me, and provides a kind of anthem which marks a passage of time on my yellow brick road.

For us fans, I imagine that is why we are ever faithful, that an insightful writer like Lloyd creates for us, a feeling of connection and being understood, in neat little three minute packages that form our own personal ‘life’ soundtracks.

And my shameless ‘Lloyd love’ seeded in me a healthy interest in ‘anguished blokes with guitars.’ Now I am a grown up, I have my own guitar bearing man, my talented partner Tex, who refuses to ever play me anything from Lloyds catalogue – and that’s probably a good thing!