When the Lightning Seeds sprouted on modern rock radio in the spring of 1990, their songs felt (as much as anything on modern rock radio could feel) like a comfy old pair of shoes — a six- or seven-year-old pair, to be specific. Indeed, to extend another metaphor to its breaking point, Ian Broudie’s bouncy, synth-laden pop enveloped listeners like a Seed-ed cloud that had been waiting quite a while to burst – yet once it did, it became the sunniest thing on radio for most of the year. The Lightning Seeds were Broudie, for all intents and purposes, when Cloudcuckooland appeared in the U.K. in 1989 (and in the States on MCA in March 1990). A Liverpudlian who had teamed with the future Frankie, Holly Johnson, in a late-’70s punk band called Big in Japan, Broudie by 1990 was a well-traveled producer of albums for Echo and the Bunnymen, the Fall, the Colourfield and others. Interestingly, his productions were credited to “Kingbird” – and when he decided to record his own music he shielded …