Released on 12 October 1984 "Rattlesnakes" was the debut studio album by the British indie rock band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, The album reached number 13 on the UK Albums Chart and spawned three singles "Perfect Sking", "Forest Fire" and "Rattlesnakes". The album was written by Lloyd Cole, who formed the band while a student at the University of Glasgow. Cole cited Bob Dylan and Booker T. & the M.G.'s as major influences, but also noted 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 (1970) by Joan Didion, and its lyrics, which also reference Renata Adler, Simone de Beauvoir and Norman Mailer.
The album's songs were written at Glasgow Golf Club, where Cole's father worked as club master and where the family lived. 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. According to Cole: We'd got our
publishing deal so we bought a Portastudio, a [Yamaha] 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.
According to Cole himself, the songs are 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. Although after the Commotions broke up, he later stated to being embarrassed by some of his lyrics on Rattlesnakes. 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.
Other track such as "Speedboat" was inspired by the 1976 novel of the same name
by Renata Adler In the book the narrator is startled when a rat runs
across the table in the restaurant where she and her partner are dining,
and her partner says, 'You were all right there until you lost your
cool": Cole said that he stole the line and included it in the song
because he loved the phrase. "Down on Mission Street" is "about a character who
says he'll never look back and will step all over other people", while the character in "Charlotte Street" is "based very closely on me. My
idea of romance obviously is meeting a wonderful, beautiful girl in the
library. I wrote that song and it took me a year to realise that I
hadn't actually mentioned that it was set in a library. I forgot to put
that in, which is a bit stupid really. The closing and brilliant track "Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken" it's about being so in love and then there is only one way to go, if you get so happy then you're ready to be heartbroken.
The critics back then were positive called a wonderful, and refreshing album, pursuing the
alternately vibrant and tender pop courses discovered by "Perfect Skin" and the classic "Forest Fire", despite Cole's pretentious toward poetry he and his band have made one of the best debut albums for a
long in which every song is instantly memorable, although others called the album as a set full of cynicism masquerading as romance. It's about past pop's
legacy to the present, rather than love or hate or any of the emotions
it feigns, even in the States, the album had favourable reviews and cited the band as the most interesting new band since Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers, a brilliant first album, that in the years to come was considered a timeless pop album, a college rock masterpiece full of smart, ironic lyrics and and symphathetic melodies.
Rattlesnakes Track List:
1. Perfect Skin
2. Speedboat
3. Rallesnakes
4. Down On Mission Street
5. Forest Fire
6. Charlotte Street
7. 2cv
8. Four Flights Up
9. Patience
10. Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken
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