On Pain

Lloyd Cole has made a career out of defying expectations in a sly, almost unprepossessing way while still maintaining his core values of deeply felt songcraft and melodic grace. This has held true whether he was making straight-ahead rock albums, dipping into country-rock, exploring electronic music, or as on 2019s Guesswork, combining his insightful songwriting and burnished vocals with the kind of majestic synth pop that was popular when he first started making records in the mid-80s. 2023s On Pain is another giant step into the world of synth pop that works equally as well. Cole recorded most of the album himself, and much of it sounds like the work of an artist in winter as he unflinchingly examines his flaws and failures while the synths do their best to caress away the hurt. Stripping away the clatter of other players and real instruments puts Coles vocals in the center of the mix, and he grabs the listeners attention instantly and rarely lets go. The calmly percolating, gently melancholy title track opens the album like a statement of intent thats pitched somewhere between vintage Prefab Sprout and a sedated Pet Shop Boys, all synth rumble, drum machine tick, and a quiet battle between the despair of the lyrics and the pleasantness of the melody. The rest of the record flickers between songs like that that peel away all the extraneous clatter to get right to the heart of the matter and classic Cole-style guitar pop thats peppered with synth sounds. These -- like the booming "Warm by the Fire" and the intricate "More of What You Are" -- benefit from the electronics-heavy arrangements, but they feel a little out of place next to the spare moments of genius that surround them. One track that does a better job of balancing the synths and strings is the albums bid for a hit single, "The Idiot." This tale of Iggy Pop and David Bowies sojourn to Berlin bubbles with champagne-sweet synths, charming lyrics, and just enough forward motion to really make it pop in the best sense of the word. Its a lovely tonic to all the songs like "Wolves" and "I Can Hear Everything" that surround it like blocks of ice made from frozen tears. On these songs, Cole chooses his settings well, mixing squiggly single-note melodies with sweeping, weeping pads and never lapsing into the kind of out-of-the-box sounds many rockers who make this kind of record end up using. Cole is far too savvy an operator for that, and for the most part, it never feels like his reach is outpacing his skills. Perhaps the only complaint about the album is that it might have been more enveloping and emotionally powerful without any real instruments or any scraps of his old sound. Still, On Pain is overall both an exciting artistic achievement and a record that should fit the bill for anyone looking for a very cold and sad synth pop update. ~ Tim Sendra