''Music in a Foreign Language'' is the sixth solo studio album by English musician

Lloyd Cole Lloyd Cole (born 31 January 1961) is an English singer and songwriter. He was lead singer of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions from 1984 to 1989 and subsequently worked solo. Early life Cole was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. He grew up in ...

, released on 9 June 2003 through

Sanctuary Records Sanctuary Records Group Limited was a record label based in the United Kingdom and is as of 2013 a subsidiary of BMG Rights Management solely for reissues. Until June 2007, it was the largest independent record label in the UK and the largest m ...

. It includes a cover of

Nick Cave Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, C ...

's track "People Ain't No Good" from his 1997 album ''

The Boatman's Call ''The Boatman's Call'' is the tenth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released in 1997. The album is entirely piano-based, alternately somber and romantic in mood, making it a marked departure from the bulk of the band's post-punk cata ...

'', as well as contributions from

Dave Derby Dave Derby is an American songwriter, recording artist, producer, and composer who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and now resides in New York City. Derby serves as a songwriter and producer foGramercy Arms a New York City musical and artist colle ...

, who worked with Cole in the band the Negatives, and former Commotions member Neil Clark on guitar.

Critical reception

Tim Sendra of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...

called the album Cole's "most intimate and low-key yet", with its "acoustic guitars, restrained drums, and subtle instrumentation", writing that it "succeeds in a way that most of his over-produced previous albums fail to do". Sendra also felt that Cole "manages to strip down his sound without falling into the trap that many artists do, that of stripping too much away and becoming boring". Rob Horning of ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, f ...

'' opined that Cole had "made the inevitable singer-songwriter move to

acoustic folk Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be c ...

", finding that the album "has a consolidating, retrenching feel" and its 10 songs are "extremely consistent in melody and mood without being monotonous". Horning went on to call its tracks "hushed, pensive, and more or less percussion-free, with delicately picked guitar quaintly ornamented by steel guitar and gentle string arrangements" and its melodies "familiar and pretty". Dan Tallis, reviewing for the

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, called it an "unashamedly laid back affair" with "10 simple and beautiful songs".

Track listing

Personnel

Musicians *

– vocals, guitar, piano, programming *

Lullaby Baxter Lullaby Baxter (born Angelina Teresa Iapaolo in 1970 in Scarborough, Ontario) is a Canadian jazz singer. Her first album, ''Capable Egg'', was released in 2000 by Atlantic Records, and her 2006 album ''Garden Cities of To-morrow'' was released b ...

– vocals (1, 3, 5, 8, 9) * Neil Clark – electric guitar (1, 4, 9, 10) *

– steel guitar (3, 5, 7), voice (9) * Ray Mason – bass guitar (5, 7, 9, 10) * Virginia Soledade – voice (9) Production * Lloyd Cole – producer *

Mick Glossop Mick Glossop is an English record producer and recording engineer. In 2009, he was awarded a Visiting Professorship at Leeds College of Music. Glossop was initially known for recording and producing for new wave and punk bands such as Magazine, ...

– mixing * Bunt Stafford Clark – mastering Other * Blaise Reutersward – photography * Hosuk Lee-Makiyama – art direction

Charts

References

{{Lloyd Cole 2003 albums Lloyd Cole albums Sanctuary Records albums