Mainstream (Lloyd Cole and the Commotions album)
| Mainstream | ||||
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| Studio album by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions | ||||
| Released | 26 October 1987 | |||
| Length | 40:02 | |||
| Label |
Polydor (UK & Europe) Capitol (US) |
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| Producer | Ian Stanley | |||
| Lloyd Cole and the Commotions chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Mainstream | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| The Great Rock Discography | 5/10 |
| Melody Maker | favourable |
| NME | 8/10 |
| Q | |
| The New Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| New Straits Times | |
| Record-Journal | B |
| Record Mirror |  |
| Sounds | |
Mainstream is the third and final studio album released by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. It was produced by Ian Stanley and released by Capitol Records in the US and Polydor in the UK on 26 October 1987. It contained the hits "From the Hip", "My Bag", and "Jennifer She Said". Although the album reached number nine in the UK, it failed to chart in America and was not embraced by all critics: Mainstream is the only Lloyd Cole and the Commotions release not to sell at least 100,000 copies in the US.
The album took two years to make as finding a producer proved difficult. The band first went with Chris Thomas, when that did not work out they brought in Stewart Copeland. With Copeland they only recorded one track, "Hey Rusty", then finally found Ian Stanley.
Donegan reflected in 2004 that "with the previous LP, Easy Pieces, we had tried to broaden out and make more of a pop record and it hadn't really worked. It sounded rushed and the songs were not all up to standard. So, a year after Easy Pieces, we went into the studio to try and make something more powerful. But the LP that we actually made took so long that we lost our initial vision by the time we finished it. The songs that Lloyd was writing were more introspective, so the stadium rock idea gradually went out the window."
Mainstream cost £300,000, ten times as much as their debut album Rattlesnakes, and took five months to record. Keyboardist Blair Cowan had already left the group by the time the album came out (hence his picture is missing from the photographs of the band that feature on the artwork, and only included on a 'dedication' to him on the inner sleeve) and Donegan was also close to calling it a day, having been accepted on a journalism course. As a result the group decided that they had come to a natural end and to split up after the release of the album, but were obliged to promote it and undertake a tour first, which took a year. After the Commotions had broken up, Cole moved to New York to resume his songwriting partnership with Cowan and joined up with Fred Maher and Robert Quine, both formerly with Lou Reed, to begin work on a solo career.
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