Archives for July 2017

Certain Songs #948: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – “Pretty Gone”

July 31, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Easy Pieces
Year: 1985

I’m guessing that to some people, this is one of the minor songs from Easy Pieces. But it actually looms large to me, because “Pretty Gone” is the song that actually inspired the original “Certain Songs” concept. Which was to write about songs that always reminds me of a specific moment in my life.

Won’t you put on your dress and come down to Magazine Avenue?

And while that concept has obviously mutated into the giant, never-ending beast that you now see in front of you, it doesn’t mean that the original handful of songs I wanted to write about — including “Safe European Home” and “Ramble Tamble”

Certain Songs #947: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – “Rich”

July 30, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Easy Pieces
Year: 1985

None of the Lloyd Cole & The Commotion albums ever got a simultaneous release in the U.K. and the U.S., so the release date years are all screwed up compared to my memories and various lists.

Rattlesnakes didn’t come out here until 1985 and Easy Pieces didn’t come out until 1986, so all of my memories of those records and the parts of my life they were the soundtrack of are for those years.

Certain Songs #946: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – “Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?”

July 29, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rattlesnakes
Year: 1984

It’s been obscured by decades of reissues that had bonus tracks and non-album b-sides, but this little beauty was the last song on the original version of Rattlesnakes, and at first it felt too low-key to be an album closer, all infinite loop acoustic guitar and accordion synth and — wait a second, is that a drum machine?

No, seriously, is that a drum machine? I mean, Paul Westerberg could get away with it, because “Color Me Impressed” and “Hayday” were on the same record, but that’s some nerve of this intellectual Scottish pretty boy to put one on his record. Doesn’t he understand anything?

Of course he did. Because Lloyd Cole knew that none of that macho bullshit mattered once he started singing:

Certain Songs #945: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – “Rattlesnakes”

July 28, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rattlesnakes
Year: 1984

As an album, Rattlesnakes is so full of great moments, it’s actually hard to just pick a few songs from it, so because I know that somebody reading this loves songs I’m not going to write about, I just wanted to shout out to things like the wordless first chorus in “Speedboat,” the setting-trees-on-fire guitar outro to “Forest Fire” and “all we ever shared was a taste in clothes” from “2cv.”

All of those songs got tons of play: on the radio, at parties, in my car, just about anywhere us college students were gathering in the mid-1980s.

Certain Songs #944: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – “Perfect Skin”

July 27, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rattlesnakes
Year: 1984

Perhaps the definitive college rock album of the mid-1980s, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions’ Rattlesnakes was an absolute utter favorite in my burgeoning social circle in 1985. While some folks found the obliqueness of R.E.M.’s frontman too distancing and the whinging of The Smiths’ frontman a too annoying, then Lloyd Cole’s songs about his various romantic entanglements other young smart people hit the mark time after time after time.

And Neil Clark’s insanely catchy jangly guitar hooks didn’t hurt either.

Certain Songs #943: LL Cool J – “Mama Said Knock You Out”

July 26, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mama Said Knock You Out
Year: 1990

You could call “Mama Said Knock You Out” several things: a top 20 single; the title track to LL Cool J’s most consistent album; proof that he could combine hardness with maturity; and one of my top 5 favorite hip-hop songs.

But, of course, there’s one thing that you absolutely shouldn’t call “Mama Said Knock You Out:”

Certain Songs #942: LL Cool J – “Goin’ Back To Cali”

July 25, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Less Than Zero Soundtrack
Year: 1987

While I don’t remember a single damn thing about either the film or book of Less Than Zero, I do remember that the film happen to coincide with the most hipstery and druggy period that me and my social circle went through.

So in my head, anyways, I think of it as “our Less Than Zero” period, despite nobody having any kind of aspirations of being like anybody in the film.

Certain Songs #941: LL Cool J – “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”

July 24, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Radio
Year: 1985

Ladies Love Cool James Todd Smith was still a teenager when he wrote and recorded Radio, which came out just a couple of months before he turned 18.

Given that it was the first Def Jam release and given how influential Rubin’s minimalist production style turned out to be, Radio is also a landmark album, a turning point for 1980’s hip-hop.

Certain Songs #940: Liz Phair – “Uncle Alvarez”

July 23, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: whitechocolatespaceegg
Year: 1998

After failing to catch lightning in a bottle a second time with 1994’s good-not-great Whip-Smart, Liz Phair changed direction completely with 1998’s transitory whitechocolatespaceegg, which abandoned the low-fi sound of her first two records for a more slick, Scott Litt-produced approach.

This sounds like I’m winding up towards an insult, but actually, quite the opposite. I really liked whitechocolatespaceegg. It was the closest thing to traditional singer-songwriter album she’s ever produced, but retained some of the musical weirdness that marked her first two albums. The lyrical themes expanded beyond love and sex, and she was writing about characters and situations that clearly weren’t autobiographical.

Certain Songs #939: Liz Phair – “Divorce Song”

July 22, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile in Guyville
Year: 1993

Oh god, “Divorce Song.” My favorite song from Exile in Guyville, and my favorite Liz Phair song.

We’ve all been there, right? One last road trip in a relationship that was clearly already a dead shark, maybe taken as a last-ditch effort at reconnecting, maybe taken because of an obligation larger than the relationship, maybe taken because you didn’t know how not to take it.

And it was a fucking disaster.