Lloyd Cole is singing songs of love and pain, and singing them very well. But, ach, you can’t please everyone. “Lost Weekend!” shouts a fan in the balcony, requesting a hit from 1985. Cole, dapper in a white suit, takes a moment before replying: “I’m definitely too old to play Lost Weekend.”
“But that’s why we’re here,” comes a second voice, across the room.
That, right there, blunt to the point of rude, is the difficulty facing older artists who are still creative, still writing good songs, but whose early success sells tickets. One of the best tracks Cole plays tonight is recent-ish work: The Idiot, an elegiac, Kraftwerk-like tribute to Bowie and Iggy’s Berlin years. It’s charming, artful and playful, but it’s not on Rattlesnakes, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ classic debut LP, and so is not received with the fervour it deserves.
Cole was in his early 20s when he wrote the Rattlesnakes songs, in a bedroom just a few miles from tonight’s gig. He’s now in his 60s and more than half that album makes the set. Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?, in particular, is beautiful. Time has not diminished his voice; if anything, it’s better – warmer, richer, burnished with experience. And it matters that the band includes a couple of ex-Commotions, Neil Clark on guitar and Blair Cowan on keyboards. These are their songs, too.
The venue is a drag, though; it smothers musicians in deadening reverence. A dropped plectrum and a human sacrifice would elicit the same polite applause. This is a problem for Cole, who, though droll, is no showman. His stage presence is modest, his playing undemonstrative, and too often the energy levels drop. There’s also an issue with the length of the set: 27 songs, plus interval, is perhaps too much of a good thing.
But then he performs Myrtle and Rose, from 2013, and all doubts vanish. A break-up ballad built around a chiming arpeggio, he introduces it as his mother’s favourite of all his songs. Clearly, a woman of taste. It’s way better than Lost Weekend, no matter what the bloke in the balcony says.
• Lloyd Cole plays Buxton Opera House, 22 January; Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 24 January; Barbican, London, 25 January
