Englishman Lloyd Cole dissolved his first band, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, after a string of polite late-'80s U.K. hits, and started anew in New York City. The result was a 1990 self-titled solo debut that, with the help of accompanists such as guitarist Robert Quine and bassist Matthew Sweet, rocked with a whiskey chaser behind it, offering up vitriolic summaries of the city and its citizens. Like a photo flash, it illuminated and captured a moment in time, but was gone in an instant. The albums that followed were enjoyable but wildly uneven affairs, and Cole simply fell off the musical map in 1995.

All of which is a long-winded way of bringing us to 2001 and Cole's latest, The Negatives, featuring his new band of the same name with Jill "I Kissed a Girl" Sobule on guitar and harmonies, former Dambuilders bassist Dave Derby, and Vitamin C collaborator Michael Kotch on guitar. Adding to the musical muscle are guest appearances by Quine, former Commotion Neil Clark, Amanda Kramer (ex-Information Society), and even some production help from Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and Too Much Joy's Bill Wittman.

Despite all the cooks, however, the album remains resolutely focused. As always, Cole spins stories of the lost and lonely, but affection has replaced that acidic smirk, and the emphasis is on fun, upbeat songs peppered with sing-along choruses.

These days, the witty put-downs are reserved for Cole himself, as on the Wings-influenced "What's Wrong With This Picture?" — "You're such an European S.O.B./ Could you survive without your irony?" — and "Tried to Rock," wherein he basically tears that first solo album to shreds ("What it takes to rock/ Is that which I have not").

Still, there are some fuzzy guitars here, as in "Too Much E," which mutated out of a revved-up cover of Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator" — a Negatives live staple. There's also a playfulness woven into the chiming guitars of songs like "Man on the Verge", an ode to personal ads, and "Negative Attitude," which pokes fun at bad moods ("Look at the girl on a bad hair day/ I think I like what she's trying to say").

The clincher, however, is the wrenching "That Boy", which explores infidelity and the pain of forgiveness in a deeper, richer way than any overblown Celine Dion epic ever could. Cole sings "Could you hold him in your arms 'til the morning comes/ When he's all cried out, could you be that girl?," from a place of 100% honesty and 0% irony. In so doing, he takes his art to a place it's never been.

Throughout the album, Cole & co. offer up one pop nugget after another, all carefully honed through warts-and-all shows held in New York over the last few years. The result is that The Negatives isn't just Cole's most consistent disc in 11 years; it's also quite possibly his best ever.