Alex Lloyd - 'Distant Light' (EMI)
3/5
By: Kevin Molloy
It's both a pity and a necessity that so many artists have to follow the same roads to success - namely the ones in between the distant venues taken in whilst on promotion tours.
Yes, we do want to witness their magic live for ourselves, but far too many deem it necessary to write about this oh-so gruelling aspect of their changing life. Some great albums have been born of it; but even songwriters supreme have fallen foul of the 'I'm a long way from home and I'm not sure that I like it, so I'll sing about it' record. And for every Joni Mitchell, a 'prisoner of the white lines on the freeway', there exists an Alex Lloyd, prisoner of cliché and tedium.
The strangest thing to our ears is that master Lloyd is supposedly an Australian export, but all aural information points stateside through way of production value and songwriting aesthetic. Whilst the boy writes songs alone and unaided, his album is a shimmering example of studio musicianship from a host of session musicians; even The Sleepy Jackson's Luke Steele lends six strings to '1000 Miles' (yet rather unnoticeably for such an eccentric character, it must be said). And rather than this wealth of musical experience lifting the songs, it instead seems to polish them away to slivers; 'Save My Soul' lacks exactly that which it yearns for - it could be sung by any number of tragi-Yank 'alternative' boy bands.
It must be said, though, that even the tracks which feel like they would come from albums with names like 'Forwards' by a group of young, shaven men called JK75 are, in fact, still really quite enjoyable. After all, though it can be embarrassing/shameful to admit, we can't help but bear a hankering for cheesy disco reliefs or 'pop' asides from our normal, no frills rock and indie diet; Alex Lloyd is in some ways the perfect solution: these are well-written and crafted songs with enough interest and intrigue to keep them credible, but not enough lyricism or innovation to make them taxing, or indeed leave you to consider their meaning for any longer than it takes to hear them. Inoffensively, tracks like 'Coming Home', 'Far Away' and '1000 Miles' do nothing more than they say in the title... which is, peculiarly, enough for now.
There are, thankfully, standout tracks. 'Distant Light' has a perfectly interlaced bass-line and quirky vocals, 'Ordinary Boy' demonstrates touches of pop, Athlete-style, and 'Beautiful' truly soars as the LP's heart-warming and truthful love-scribing ('you're filling up my day, with things I can't explain'). And even with these asides, you will not find a song you can despise on this album.
Yet being inconsequential can sometimes be more damning than failing outright. Whilst we're happy to let Lloyd's music wash over us without effect for now, the same will not be said for the next LP, and he will find public interest dwindle more rapidly than in a lecture on the rights of otters if he over-plugs an album without depth, which is what this, in essence, is.
Artists in this article: Alex Lloyd
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