DM1ST(^44) DAILY MIRROR FRIDAY 30.08.2019
SPIRIT
The Complete Potatoland ★★★★
Renamed by Jimi
Hendrix, the late great
Randy Wolfe became
Randy California, a
suitably drug-fuelled,
other-worldly talent
worthy of his mentor’s pioneering mantle
when he originally delivered this
groundbreaking concept album in 1973.
Shamefully rejected by Spirit’s then
record company, Potatoland finally saw its
release in 1981. There have been several
versions since, but this beautifully
annotated clamshell four CD box is definitive
with extra CDs including bonus tracks.
SERGE PIZZORNO
The S.L.P. ★★
Oh dear – on his first
solo album, Kasabian
mastermind Serge
attempts to deliver
“an updated self-
portrait”, but manages
to blot his copybook badly.
Upfront, as a singer, he offers variations
on the sound of being sick. Laughable,
toe-cringingly embarrassing lyrics
regularly undercut any musical ingenuity.
Serge is already preparing the new
Kasabian album, butTom Meighan
certainly doesn’t need to worry that he’s
saved the good stuff for himself.
SHERYL CROW
Threads ★★★★
This is a career
knockout for multi-
million-selling Sheryl –
evidently in possession
of the coolest contact
book imaginable. Long-
time associates including Willie Nelson
and Keith Richards line up alongside icons
such as Mavis Staples, Chuck D, Neil
Young, The Eagles’ Henley and Walsh, and
even the late Johnny Cash, to help Crow
stitch together the many strands of her
musical personality. Persuasive and
funny, provocative and affirmative –
a class act.
Album releases
MUSIC
TALK
WITH
LLOYD COLE
MUSIC with GAVIN MARTIN
Cole still
burning
bright
Former Commotions singer discusses his new album and avoiding the great Lou Reed
LLOYD Cole shot to fame as
the purveyor of sophisticated
jangle guitar pop with his band
the Commotions’ debut album
Rattlesnakes in 1984.
The Commotions made three
albums and Lloyd’s eventful career
since then has been divided between
singer-songwriting and instrumental
electronic output. But
Buxton-born Cole’s
reputation as a pop swot
has always followed him.
“I was doing a TV show
somewhere some years
back and John Lydon was
walking down the corridor
and saw me coming.
“We didn’t even talk, he
just looked from the ground as we
passed and said ‘read any good
books lately, Lloyd?’
“I was like, fair play, you know? Off
the top of his head, pretty good that,”
he smiles.
With original members Neil Clark
and Blair Cowan on board, Lloyd’s
brand new album, Guesswork,
presents a Commotions reunion of
sorts. It also integrates synthesisers
he has hitherto kept largely separate
from his songwriting work.
“My initial idea for the record was
to involve quite a lot of
different collaborators.
“Then Neil did his
thing, Blair was already
involved, and all of a
sudden, it looked really
nice, just the three of us.
“It does feel to me a
bit like the record that if
we’d stayed together, we might have
made. It’s an older person’s record
for sure.”
Also on the album is Fred Maher,
one-time drummer for the late and
very great Lou Reed. Lou was a key
early Cole influence.
“We were almost neighbours, we
lived quite close in New York but I
actively avoided him,” he says.
“My Lou theory is that he was so
angry because he didn’t write a good
song after 1968 and he took it out on
the rest of the world.”
Probably just as well, then, that
Lloyd, who lives in Massachusetts,
never got to share his (wrong-
headed) theory with Lou. He admits
that, like Mr Reed, he loaded his
early songs with literary ambition.
“I definitely had lofty ideals. Yeah.
I mean, I thought I was bringing the
new journalism to pump things up.
“I thought I could remove the
cliche of the singer that’s always in
the first person to be cold and
removed.
“Then I look back at those songs
and they all seem to be about the
time that I lived in London when I
was 18.
“So, go figure.”
■ Lloyd Cole’s album Guesswork is
available now. Lloyd is touring in
October and November with former
Commotions’ member Neil Clark.
‘‘It feels like the
record we’d
have made if
we’d stayed
together
Platform Seven
Louise Doughty
Louise Doughty’s novel Apple Tree Yard, which became a BBC
drama, features a woman in trouble after the man who raped her
is murdered. But in real life, abusive men tend to kill rather than be
killed. And here teacher Lisa falls for doctor Matty, a smooth-talking
psycho who knows how to hurt her without leaving a bruise.
Lisa initially tries to explain away Matty’s weirdness, then bravely
tries to escape the relationship – until in the course of one such
attempt, she dies. That’s not a spoiler, as we know from the start
that the novel is narrated by Lisa’s ghost. Despite a slow build-up,
when Lisa starts telling us about her life rather than her afterlife,
the book becomes unputdownable and finally very moving.
BY JAKE KERRIDGE
Faber, £14.99
How It Was
Janet Ellis
The second novel from ex-Blue
Peter presenter Janet Ellis is an
engrossing read about a family
in crisis. As her husband lies
dying, Marion reflects upon the
past 40 years and a story of
family secrets and twisted
relationships emerges. Toxic tension bubbles
between Marion and teenage daughter Sarah, and
when Marion has an affair she sparks a chain of
events that push the family to breaking point.
BY MERNIE GILMORE
Two Roads, £16.99
How The Dead
Speak
Val McDermid
Dr Tony Hill is behind bars and
detective Carol Jordan has been put
out to pasture. But then their
former colleagues discover
skeletons and rotting body parts at
a former convent. Nearby, the
corpses of eight men are decomposing. The race is
on to find out whether the bodies are linked and the
work of a serial killer. Here McDermid shows why
she still reigns supreme as the Queen of Crime.
BY STUART WINTER
Little, Brown, £8.99
BOOKS with CHARLOTTE HEATHCOTE
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