In a previous life, Scottish singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole must have been a ventriloquist, because in this life he's still having trouble finding his own voice. Too much of Rattlesnakes, his debut album, sounds like Lou Reed, Tom Verlaine and Bob Dylan doing the best of Lloyd Cole. Indeed, on entries like the spirited Dylanesque romp "Four Flights Up" and the melancholy, Television-like "Charlotte Street," his battle to be heard over the echoes of his influences is basically a hard-fought standoff. Cole's breathy, tremulous vocal style is an effective dramatic weapon, but the Commotions lack an imaginative guitarchitect, like the Smiths' Johnny Marr, to give his intimate narratives a memorable frame.

But if Rattlesnakes arrives critically short of the greatness claimed for it in the British rock press, its promise is not so easily dismissed. "Forest Fire" is an unexpected delight, the funky tease in the rhythm and punctuating splashes of bright metallic keyboards capturing the desperation and mercenary desire in Cole's voice, and in his lyrics: "I believe in love I'll believe in anything That's gonna get me what I want Get me off my knees." "Perfect Skin," with its insidiously catchy chorus setting off the conversational drone of the verses, is wonderfully deviant pop – convincing evidence that Cole can be his own man, and good at it. A few more songs like this one and the man really could start a commotion. (RS 442)

DAVID FRICKE