The sweeping jangle of guitars topped with lyrics ostensibly about gurls tended to evoke a picture of singer and lyricist Lloyd as a love sick but over-aged adolescent with a band heading for the innocuous soft-pop option. But it was not so. Their album (also called Rattlesnakes) which appeared at the end of the year was roundly impressive, its songs alive with dark wit and mischievous irony. I was charmed!

Lloyd is now having to endure a weird kind of agony. He harbours a lurking fear of himself and his work being misconstrued, something that. many in his position would by now have accepted as an occupational hazard. While the Commotions success in real (i.e. sales) terms has been modest (only 'Forest Fire' dented the British Top 30), he sits pensively as if the whole world is already awaiting his next move and the media his next remark. He deliberates over his replies and his fingers tremble perceptibly as he periodically raises a glass of water to his lips.

He confesses: "My reaction to the press has been anger and sorrow over the number of assumptions that have been made about me which have been unfounded. The assumptions are made on the basis of the records but I should have thought all one could tell from a record was that I had a sense of irony. I don't think there's much else you could glean from a record about me.

"I was very upset by a few things last year and generally saddened by the response to me personally. I made a mess of a few interviews, made errors and said a few silly things. I hate to see things in print that make me look how I don't want to look. I know that all my friends read these things and probably think 'Lloyd, you made a bit of an idiot of yourself there'."

Perhaps at the crux of why Lloyd appears to make a bit of an idiot of himself are the finicky dragons of the UK music press who crave a veritable doctrine to spring forth from vinyl like a great raised totem before they can react to the music. For Lloyd it is a perplexing equation. By dint of his 'un-personal' writing he becomes a victim of what he calls the "soul ethic of pop".

"I believe that there's a lot of confusion in pop music these days and certainly the ethic behind the music is more important than it should be. The sentiment behind a record is much more important to some people than it is to me. I think it's silly because the most marvellous sentiment in the world was probably behind that 'Skin Deep' record but I wouldn't ask anyone to actually listen to it. What was that Bananarama record about the child getting shot in Northern Ireland? It was banal rubbish.

"Paul Weller is someone who can be accused of not knowing what he wants except that it's something to the left. That's what I would say. I don't know what I want but it is something akin to socialism. To actually express a feeling as vague as that in a song lyric would strike me as a very foolish thing to do.. Some of the worst travesties in pop music have been done in the name of socialism."

Rattlesnakes gets better each time I play it. It seems like a work of thought and depth and I'm surprised when Lloyd tells me that most of the songs were hatched in the studio immediately prior to recording.

"The oldest song was nine months old. 'Charlotte Street' was about five minutes old, 'Four Flights Up' was about seven minutes old. I'm really happy with the lyrics, it was just a question of surprise that I was able to sing them so quickly. I think when you're not in a group you tend to frown on the idea of people writing albums in the studio, but when you think of the time we spend in the studio it would be a great waste if we didn't. It's certainly more relaxed than when you're touring constantly. On the last tour I hardly wrote a single lyric because I'd pretty much become a vegetable about halfway through."

The disc deserves an award for its puns, its name dropping and its constant almost obsessional reference to the America of fiction. (Lloyd has never seen the real America – this could be significant.) For example, the names Norman Mailer and Truman Capote are tossed out quite casually. Had Lloyd studiously read these people or did they just make good rhymes?

"They do make good rhymes but the reason I use specific people is that they have specific connotations. Norman Mailer is still mainly known for The Naked And The Dead, a book primarily about the American Way. Truman Capote is known – or was, the poor man passed on as soon as I mentioned his name – as somebody who would be seen out a lot with Andy Warhol as much as he was as a writer. He danced with Marilyn Monroe, that's why she's listed as a friend of Truman Capote. It was an attempt to paint a picture of an extremely well-to-do, affluent person.

"There are certainly a lot of American references which is not necessarily a good thing. I'm a bit more aware of what I'm doing now; then it was written off the top of my head. I was very preoccupied with the American fiction I had been reading. I would still hold America to be a very stimulating backdrop to anything. Whatever we have in Britain they have in America in grosser proportions. Except charm of course.

"Any corruption we have here is like a mouse next to an elephant compared to America. I think it's still apparent that the only law is the dollar over there. To live in a country like that must be strange if you're not totally aware of that."

Parts of the album are tastefully redolent of mid-60s Bob Dylan. I mention this and it pulls a grin from Lloyd's otherwise stern visage.

"Yes, in the two years previous to recording Rattlesnakes I'd listened to an awful lot of Bob Dylan. Some of the songs are definitely verging on pastiche, lyrically not musically. 'Perfect Skin' was written after having listened to 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' too many times. With 'Four Flights Up' I just wanted a racy lyric that went on and on and on and said an awful lot of things but was basically a blues song like 'Tombstone Blues'.

"It's the way in which Bob Dylan would use a lot of words and still sing blues that appealed to me. I liked blues before I liked Bob Dylan and putting the two together ... I like putting the things I like into what I'm doing. It's not a question of in your head wanting to make a record like Bob Dylan but I would always take Bob Dylan as a yardstick of lyrics. If I get vaguely compared to Bob Dylan of that period I must be achieving something.

"I find that pop music is a bit like painting in that respect. You do a marvellous painting which has reference points to other paintings that you want people to know about – 'this bit over here is a homage to somebody and this bit over here is a homage to somebody else' – but you want the whole thing taken separately as self-justifying."

International star Paul Young has sought permission, to record 'Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken', the closing track from Rattlesnakes. Such a request would fill many with glee at the thought of substantial royalties in numerous currencies. Yet once again Lloyd is filled with the horror of being taken for something that he's not and/or his music taken for something (which he feels) it's not.

I said 'Okay, you can do it if you want'. I was pleased but if that's seen as a soul song I might be in trouble. I would feel I've been misunderstood and all the money we could make wouldn't outweigh being misunderstood."

Additional fuel to Lloyd's anxieties are elements in the record industry which, he informs me, see Lloyd Cole And The Commotions as natural successors to ... Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (!) and would like the band to be playing the stadiums of middle America as soon as possible.

"It's frightening. They think 'Guitars, lyrics with some meaning ... Tom Petty!! ' You get to the point where you don't want to sell records to these people. About halfway through last year my 'teenybop presence' got to such an irritating stage that we didn't really want to sell records to teenyboppers anymore. We can do without that money. You find yourself alienating parts of the audience otherwise it becomes intolerable.

"I couldn't feel any benevolence to a child that came to see us and just stares, has your picture on their wall and doesn't pay any attention to what you're saying and doesn't get any of the jokes. They're using you and it feels horrid. if I was a teenybopper today I suppose Morrisey would be my hero because he's quite handsome and writes those interesting lyrics."

Like the whinging Mancunian, Lloyd is miserable now (apparently the pair once had dinner together – imagine the revelry!). Pop fame is not what he expected it to be. "No, it's worse. It's not a very fulfilling business to be in on a day to day basis. In fact, it's pretty horrible for the most part."

In the future Lloyd Cole And The Commotions ("the name is meant to be ironic, we're quite a quiet group") want to use young and unknown artists on their videos, have a Winston O'Link (the American photographer famous for his locomotive shots) pic for one of their record sleeves and "sell records to people who listen to them. The ambition is basically to get away from the archetypal pop music thing."