Product Code: rock
Artist: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
Origin: UK
Label: Music On Vinyl (2016)
Format: LP
Availability: Enquire Now
Condition:
Cover: M
Record: M
Genre: Indie Rock , Rock N

Rattlesnakes

Sealed brand new 180 gram album with 4 bonus tracks and insert.

Rattlesnakes is the debut album by British group Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, released on 12 October 1984.[1] The album reached number 13 in the UK Album Charts and included the hit singles "Perfect Skin" (#26 in UK), "Forest Fire" (#41 in UK) and "Rattlesnakes" (#65 in UK, #31 in the Netherlands).

The bulk of the album was written by frontman Lloyd Cole, who formed the band while a student at the University of Glasgow. Cole cites Bob Dylan and Booker T. & the MGs as major influences, but also notes the impact of his studies in English and philosophy on both the album's title, a reference to the novel Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, and its lyrics, which also reference Renata Adler, Simone de Beauvoir and Norman Mailer.[3]The album's songs written at Glasgow Golf Club, where Cole's father worked as club master and where the family lived.[4] Cole recalled, "'Perfect Skin'" and 'Forest Fire' were written one weekend in the basement, underneath the golf club where we used to live and my parents used to work. We'd got our publishing deal so we bought a Portastudio, a DX7 and a drum machine. I demo-ed both of them that weekend and we had a record deal within a month of that; it was that quick. Every single song on Rattlesnakes was written within a year of the record coming out."[5]

Cole described the songs on Rattlesnakes as "about the things people do when they are in love. People get in all sorts of weird scenarios and I quite like the idea of that. I write about that more than anything. Sometimes it is comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny and tragic at the same time. After years of trying to deny it, I'm also starting to realise that I basically write about myself."[6] He later reflected, "It's like most of [the characters in the songs] live in that same basement flat. It's very romanticised."[7] After the Commotions broke up, he would later admit to being embarrassed by some of his lyrics on Rattlesnakes: "'She looks like Eve Marie Saint/In On the Waterfront'. Yes, some of the earlier lyrics were very naive. But I was a young man! I really was. You can just imagine me trying to wear a French trenchcoat at the time, thinking I looked very cool when, in fact, I looked really stupid. But maybe that's why people liked it."[8]