An odd choice, but let me explain...
There must be a universal rule for all college students, where your flatmate plays an album or artist that you wouldn't ordinarily like so many times that you actually start liking it. This was the case for me with Lloyd Cole, as my buddy next door would not only listen to 'Rattlesnakes,' but also sing it to me when he'd had a few too many on the way back from the pub. Somehow it worked, and from a position of total ambivalence, I started to love it and joined in sometimes on the way back from the pub.
Lloyd's work has not aged well. In fact from about 1990 onwards he's been distinctly unfashionable, but for a short period of time he had it all. Like a cross between a smoother Morrissey and 'Mary's Prayer' by Danny Wilson, Lloyd Cole unleashed his quaint, lyrical masterpieces on a time and country that wasn't quite ready for them. And probably still isn't.
'Charlotte Street' is my personal favourite, just for the intelligent lyrics, catchy singalongability and its perfect capturing of a time in a dishevelled terrace house in late eighties Tesside.
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