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Alex Lloyd.
 "I'm just remembering what I got myself into," laughs Alex Lloyd when I ask how he's settling back into doing the media rounds. After all, he's had a bit of a break from the rock'n'roll treadmill since 2003's 'Watching Angels Mend'. Since then he got married, had a son, split with his record label EMI and seriously considered blowing the rock thing off altogether. However, instead of marking the end of his career, the time off inspired the next phase: the writing of his self-titled fourth album, the first of his new deal with SonyBMG. "These songs really encouraged me to sign another deal and go through the process again," Lloyd explains earnestly, "and I believed in them."
At first listen 'Alex Lloyd' sounds almost like the work of a band rather than a solo performer with a coterie of US studio sidemen. "That's funny, because the last record was much more of a live record - everything was cut live [in the studio], whereas on this record I laid down a lot of the acoustic guitar and vocals, then tracked the drums and bass, then the guitars and strings and things. But it does [sound like a band] though, because it's got such amazing players on it."
Lloyd explains that producer Rick Parashar (perhaps best known for his work on Pearl Jam's 'Ten') assembled a crack team of studio hands for the sessions in Seattle, including string arranger David Campbell (who'd worked with his son Beck, as well as the likes of Michael Jackson and Macy Gray), Pink's drummer Brian MacLeod, "and the bass player, who I didn't know much about: [Five For Fighting's] Curt Schniedier who turned out to be probably the best bass player I've ever heard," he laughs. "He's a very musical bass player. And then Eric Shermerhorn on guitar, he's played with Iggy Pop, and he's got a very atmospheric sound. I don't think they're the usual hired guns that you usually get: there was a definite feeling in the studio that everyone really liked the songs and they were there to do their best. And that was actually the reason why I ended up working with [Rick]: originally I was in America to meet with Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads [about producing the record], who I was really excited to meet, and it wasn't until I got back to Australia that I was thinking about the meetings I'd had in LA, and the one I had with Rick, like, it was OK, but I didn't really think we'd be working together - but then he sent me the list of musicians that he was thinking of getting for the sessions and the other records they'd done, and it just seemed like he'd hit it on the money."
Lloyd is chattering like an excited child about how much he enjoyed making the album - a definite contrast to the dark stories I'd heard about the recording of his first album, 1999's 'Black The Sun', during which he'd reportedly fought bitterly with British producer Ed Buller (Suede, Pulp). "Well, the thing about working with Ed was that I'd already been making that album for a year and a half myself - a lot of the tracks were already done, and some of them, like [first single] Momo I was really happy with. I didn't want to change it at all and he wanted me to change it completely, and I said no way," Lloyd spits. "So I left it the way it was meant to be. I mean, he did some mixing and some additional production [on the other tracks] rather than producing per se, although we did do some of the tracks together, like My Way Home and Lucky Star. But it was more about me preserving the original record that I'd done, whereas coming into this record I was really adamant about really letting the producer produce it. I could just concentrate on being the singer and the songwriter. I don't know that I could have done that three years ago - I wasn't in the right headspace to do that. I feel like with this one I was ready to let go a little bit in order for it to be that much better. I'd like to produce someone else's record, where I could just sit back and be totally objective - but I think it's too hard to be objective about my own music."
Andrew P Street
 | 'Alex Lloyd' is out now through SonyBMG and Alex Lloyd plays at the Governor Hindmarsh on Sat 5 Nov and Sun 6 Nov. |
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