Lloyd Cole working on new box set

Lloyd Cole is to follow up this year’s Lloyd Cole and the Commotions box – Collected Recordings 1983-1989 – with a similar set that focuses on his solo work issued the 1990s.

The singer-songwriter told his fans via Facebook yesterday that he has “started work listening to almost 30 year old cassettes for box set #2 – first four solo albums + lost fifth + lots of demos… including 2 from 1988 in Glasgow with Blair [Cowan].”

Cole had a very productive first half of the nineties; Lloyd Cole, the highly regarded first solo album was issued in 1990 and followed in 1991 by Don’t Get Weird On Me Babe which saw LC broaden his canvas with some lushly orchestrated songs on side one. 1993’s pithily titled Bad Vibes arguably contained a career highlight (So You’d Like To Save The World) but that did nothing to help Cole’s downward spiralling commercial fortunes, something acknowledged by album closer Can’t Get Arrested. Like Lovers Do was a welcome top thirty UK hit from 1995’s Love Story but this ultimately proved to be something of a ‘blip’. LC would release no further long-players until the new millennium with the The Negatives band/album.

Lloyd Cole’s indicates that this box will include a “lost fifth” album which presumably would/should have been issued between 1995 and 2000. Instead we had to make do with 1998’s The Collection. 

There were some great singles in this period such as She’s A Girl and I’m A Man, Downtown, Baby, and Morning Is Broken. However, a look at the chart positions (when they did chart) is rather depressing since LC didn’t have any top 40 hits in the UK at all in the 1990s apart, from the aforementioned Like Lovers Do (and even that ‘hit’ peaked at a modest #24).

Lloyd promises ‘lots of demos’ on the new box and we really must applaud his openness in terms of sharing his plans with fans, to the extent that he’s even posted a previously unreleased demo of Lloyd Cole album track A Long Way Down on SoundCloud. You can listen to this below.

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With the albums remastered, the unreleased album and demos fans can look forward to at least a six-CD box set. If Lloyd chooses to echo Collected Recordings set and include a DVD of promo videos and TV appearances that will add a seventh disc. It’s probably unlikely that the economics of this project would allow it to go beyond that, but nothing is obviously confirmed at this early stage.

There is clearly no release date at this early stage, but hopefully this project might reach fruition towards the end of next year.

Read the our interview with Lloyd Cole about this year’s Collected Recordings box set.

• • UK Pre-order: Collected Recordings 1983-1989
• • USA Pre-order: Collected Recordings 1983-89
• • CANADA Pre-order: Collected Recordings 1983-1989
• • GERMANY Pre-order: Collected Recordings 1983-1989
• • SPAIN Pre-order: Collected Recordings 1983-1989
• • ITALY Pre-order: Collected Recordings 1983-1989 *great price