With six albums and a movie soundtrack to his name, Alex Lloyd is coming back to WA for acoustic shows at Settlers Tavern, Margaret River, on Thursday, June 5, and the Fly By Night on Friday, June 6. AARON BRYANS reports,
Following the release of his fifth album, Good In The Face Of A Stranger, Alex Lloyd had seemingly disappeared from the mainstream media.
However, in 2011, the Australian singer/songwriter reappeared alongside The Pigram Brothers as the face of the Mad Bastards film soundtrack; a process that took the talented musician no time to adapt to.
“With a solo record, it’s kind of all on you to come up with the music and write it,” Lloyd explains. “With a film, you’re directed by a director and a producer and various other people and what they want, so you’re kind of trying to please those small groups of people… I think the process is kind of to-ing and fro-ing a little bit and once you kind of hit the right mark and everyone’s happy with the process and where you are at with the basic music, it’s just putting it all together to picture and composing it to the picture… kind of to let it be there without being there.”
Lloyd’s five-year album gap gave him plenty of time to evolve his music, find himself and finally settle down, returning to normality in the UK where he began writing for various mainstream artists.
“I did some stuff for Passenger and a few other various UK, European and American artists. I thought it was a good way for me to be at home with the kids and take them to school and work during the day like a normal nine-to-five.
“I guess when you do the film stuff you get to explore a lot more styles of music. I used to have a five-year plan about how things would go and I guess life just does what it does anyway. It’s kind of hard to create or predict myself, musically. I just built a studio and I’m in the process of painting it at the moment and I’m really looking forward to just doing whatever comes into my head and not thinking about a style or a chart.”
Come August, 2013, Lloyd had released his latest album, Urban Wilderness, a dynamic change from prior works, that featured uplifting and groovy tunes; a style that Lloyd has openly embraced.
“When I recorded the album it was 100 metres from the beach and that sunshine and energy must have rubbed off on it. It’s a more positive kind of vibe to when I was sitting in dark rooms.”
Recently completing a tour of the east coast; Lloyd is returning to WA for two shows this week. Expect intimacy and a relaxed vibe as Lloyd looks to please his fans, old and new.
“I’m going to keep it pretty small. To be honest with you the market’s only small now anyway in the sense of what you can and can’t do. This is only an acoustic run in WA. I just did a couple of shows in Melbourne and Hobart and it’s kind of just a bit of a sing-a-long. A lot of my old songs from all my previous records and a few tracks off the new record, and kind of a laidback vibe, really.”
