Alex Lloyd is a bit of a songwriting hero in his native Australia. Apparently, people choose to get married to his massive hit single ‘Amazing’ and flock to his gigs in their thousands. Knowing this, the album comes as a bit of a surprise, and not in a good way.
Lloyd does the singer-songwriter schtick by the book all the way through. The album strings one perfectly crafted, formulaic tune to another, with plenty of radio-friendly three-minute hum-alongs. Nevertheless, you would struggle to pick out any one particularly memorable song. In fact, it’s the kind of album that plays away in the background, but fails to keep your attention for more than the opening chords of each song. By all accounts, in his live performances he manages to infuse the bland tracks with a lot more soul and individuality, which would go a long way to explaining his popularity Down Under, but that live energy just didn’t quite make it to the recorded version.
This is the album that is intended to bring Alex Lloyd across to our side of the world, but unfortunately it just doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi that it would need to mark him out among the plethora of singer-songwriters that populate our music scene.
With all the homegrown talent on offer here, there really is no need for an import that does what it says on the tin, without doing it better. (But we have to give him props for his online presence www.alexlloyd.com, which is possibly the coolest music website we have ever come across).