Lloyd Cole Albums in Order: 17 Records Across 39 Years
The Lloyd Cole albums in order run from Rattlesnakes in 1984 to On Pain in 2023, seventeen records across 39 years, the first three of them billed as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. My map draws each album as a station and each of the 66 credited musicians in my research as a line.
Blair Cowan plays keyboards on the first five of those records, from 1984 to 1991. Then his line stops. It starts again in 2010, and he is on three of the four records after that. Nineteen years of nothing in the middle of the longest line on the print except Cole's own.
The 17 Lloyd Cole Albums in Order, 1984 to 2023
Transcribed from my research sheet, in the order the map draws them. Live albums and compilations are left off by editorial rule, so this is the studio run only.
- Rattlesnakes (1984), as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
- Easy Pieces (1985), as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
- Mainstream (1987), as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
- Lloyd Cole (1990)
- Don't Get Weird on Me Babe (1991)
- Bad Vibes (1993)
- Love Story (1995)
- The Negatives (2000)
- Plastic Wood (2001)
- Music in a Foreign Language (2003)
- Anti Depressant (2006)
- Broken Record (2010)
- Selected Studies, Vol. 1 (2013)
- Standards (2013)
- 1D Electronics 2012-2014 (2015)
- Guesswork (2019)
- On Pain (2023)
Two of those share a year. Selected Studies, Vol. 1 and Standards both landed in 2013, and they get two separate stations.
Lloyd Cole Discography Map
Seventeen albums across 39 years, the Commotions and the solo records drawn as one network.
See This Art PrintThe Lines on This One Stop and Start Again
Most discography maps have lines that run and then end. This one has lines that run, vanish for a decade or two, and reappear.
Neil Clark, the Commotions guitarist, reaches nine albums the long way round. He plays on the first three, misses the next three, returns for Love Story in 1995, stays through The Negatives, Music in a Foreign Language and Anti Depressant in 2006, then disappears for thirteen years and comes back for the last two.
Fred Maher is on six. Drums on the 1990 self-titled album, Don't Get Weird on Me Babe in 1991, and Love Story in 1995, then a fifteen-year gap before Broken Record in 2010, Standards in 2013 and Guesswork in 2019. Matthew Sweet plays on three albums between 1990 and 1993, then one more in 2013, twenty years after the last.
Anne Dudley does the same thing in miniature. String arrangements on Rattlesnakes and Easy Pieces, then nothing until The Negatives in 2000, fifteen years later.
Nobody was sacked. People moved countries, had other careers, and came back when there was a record worth coming back for.
After Nineteen Years Away, Is It Still the Same Line?
This is the question this map made me answer, and I do not think any other print in my range forces it as hard.
A tube line is a continuous thing. That is the whole visual promise: you put your finger on a name and follow it. But Blair Cowan's involvement is not continuous, and drawing it as though it were tells you something false: that he was quietly around the whole time.
The alternative is to draw him twice, as two separate short lines that happen to share a name. That is worse. It implies two different people, and it destroys the one thing the map is actually good at showing: that the person who played on Rattlesnakes is the same person playing in 2023.
So the line runs with a hole in it. The gap is visible because the stations in between simply have nothing on that line, and the eye reads the absence without needing a caption. It is the closest a transit map gets to expressing that somebody went away and then came back.
The Commotions Rhythm Section Never Came Back
Two people do not return, and it is worth saying who.
Lawrence Donegan on bass and Stephen Irvine on drums play on Rattlesnakes, Easy Pieces and Mainstream, the three records billed as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, and then never appear again across the next fourteen albums.
So, of the band, the keyboard player and the guitarist both eventually came back, and the rhythm section did not. On the print, that reads as two lines that stop dead in 1987, while two others carry on through to 2023.
Donegan, incidentally, went on to become a golf correspondent for the Guardian, which is not something the map can show.
Two Albums Have Nobody On Them But Him
Plastic Wood in 2001 and 1D Electronics 2012-2014 in 2015 are instrumental electronic records, and my research names exactly one person on each.
These are the narrowest stations in my entire range. Not thin because the paperwork failed, which happens, but thin because one man made them alone.
Selected Studies, Vol. 1 in 2013, is nearly as sparse, with two entries, the other being Hans-Joachim Roedelius of Cluster, the German ambient pioneer, a collaboration no one predicted from the man who wrote "Perfect Skin".
Standards Pulls Three Separate Eras Into One Station
Ten names stand at Standards in 2013, a reunion record, even though it is never described as one.
Blair Cowan is there from the Commotions. Fred Maher and Matthew Sweet are there from the New York records of the early nineties. Dave Derby, Matt Cullen and Mark Schwaber come off the latter American band. And Will Cole, Lloyd's son, plays guitar and sings harmony, appearing on the map exactly once.
Three decades of the same career standing at one station. On a list of credits, there is a row of names. On a map, it is several long lines converging after years apart, which is a different thing to look at.
Side by side with Selected Studies, Vol. 1, the ambient duo record from the same year, the two stations look like they belong to different artists. That is the most efficient illustration I can offer of what this catalogue actually does.
Lou Reed's Guitarist Is on Four of These
Robert Quine plays on the 1990 self-titled album, Don't Get Weird on Me Babe, Love Story and The Negatives: four records across ten years.
Quine is best known for his work with Lou Reed and the Voidoids, and he died in 2004, so his line on this map is complete. It runs, and then it stops for the reason that lines eventually stop.
He is not the only surprise from that stretch. Don't Get Weird on Me Babe, in 1991, features Leland Sklar and Carlos Vega, two of the most-recorded session players in Los Angeles, alongside Suzie Katayama on strings. I count ten names on that record in my sheet, where the summary row beside them says six, and where those two disagree, I follow the names.
The Last Station Has Seven Names On It
On Pain in 2023 brings back Blair Cowan, Neil Clark and Dave Derby, and adds Renee Lo Bou and Mark Frith.
The detail I like most is Joan Wasser. She appears on Broken Record and Standards credited as Joan As Police Woman, and on On Pain under her own name. Same person, same line, two different billings - exactly the sort of thing that has to be resolved before a name can be drawn at all.
Sizing This One Depends on Which Half Matters
The stations are wildly uneven here, which changes the usual advice.
The A2 at 420 x 594mm (23 x 16 in) handles the shape well: three crowded Commotions records, a busy American stretch, then the sparse experimental years. It starts at £42.00.
The A1 at 594 x 841mm (33 x 23 in) is worth it if the person receiving it cares about the middle of the catalogue. Easy Pieces, Mainstream, The Negatives and Standards carry the heaviest name counts, and those are the stations where the smaller size asks you to squint.
Both come unframed if they would rather choose a frame themselves, or in a black wood frame, ready to hang. Every print is a Giclée on 230gsm premium fine art paper, textured matte, archival and acid-free, with the full detail on the print and frame specification page.
Questions About the Commotions, the Electronic Records and the Gaps
How many albums did Lloyd Cole make?
Seventeen on my map, from Rattlesnakes in 1984 to On Pain in 2023, counting the three Commotions records and the fourteen solo ones together.
Does it cover the Commotions as well as the solo albums?
Both. Rattlesnakes, Easy Pieces and Mainstream are the first three stations, billed as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, and the map runs on through fourteen solo records to On Pain.
Are the instrumental and electronic albums on it?
Yes. Plastic Wood, Selected Studies, Vol. 1 and 1D Electronics 2012-2014 all have stations, even though two of them name only Cole himself. Leaving them off would make the catalogue look tidier than it is.
Why do some lines have big gaps in them?
Because the musicians genuinely stopped and started. Blair Cowan has a nineteen-year gap and Matthew Sweet a twenty-year one. The map draws each of them as a single line with a hole rather than as two separate lines.
What is not on the map?
Live albums, compilations and the Commotions singles collections. The map plots the studio records only, so anything that is not a studio album has no station, and anything released after the artwork was drawn is not on there either.
Does it show who played what on each track?
No. Each line tells you which albums the musician appears on. Track-level roles appear only on my Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup album map.
A Brass Player Links This Print to a PiL Record
The cross-connection here is one I would never have guessed and only found by reading both sets of credits.
Gary Barnacle is credited with brass arrangements on Easy Pieces in 1985. He also turns up in my research for the John Lydon discography art print, playing brass and keyboards on Public Image Ltd's This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get in 1984. A jangling Glasgow pop record and a post-punk album made a year apart, sharing a session horn player.
For neighbours rather than credits, The Smiths albums in order covers the same mid-eighties British songwriting shelf, and Joy Division and New Order albums in order is the other map where a band becomes something else entirely partway through.
The full range sits in the music art print collection. If you came here for the gift rather than the research, the Lloyd Cole discography art print is in A2 or A1, unframed or in a black wood frame, from £42.00, and there is a gift card for music fans if you would rather let them choose the map themselves.
