Story by Greg Phillips

The fate of a collection of a songs bound for the recording room is not only entrusted to the performer and his or her performance in the studio, but is also affected by choice of producer, additional musicians used and gear played, among other things. Those songs in the hands of two completely different groups of talent could end up sounding poles apart. Alex Lloyd had clocked up sales of 100,000 copies of his debut album "Black the Sun", had written a new bunch of songs based on 15 years of personal experiences and knew exactly what he wanted from "Watching Angels Mend", his new album.

Enter Magnus Fiennes, brother of Hollywood actors Joseph and Ralph Fiennes and not-too-shabby record producer. In Fiennes, Lloyd had found a person he could trust to export what had been sitting in his mind, and import those ideas to disc, despite some lively discussion in the process.

"It wasn’t so much that we disagreed on the actual music at any point" said Lloyd on reflection, "it was more about how you did it. In some respects you could say it was petty, but in another way it was frustration. None of the arguments were ever for personal reasons, there was never like a hidden agenda in the arguments to get our point across. When it came to actually asking each other’s opinion on the work that we had done separately, we were always pretty honest. After making the first one and learning a lot from that I had a very clear idea of what I wanted. When we felt it was slipping away from the plan we would pull each other into line."

The new album was written going back and forth from Sydney to London over the past year, Lloyd was after a change of environment to aid the creative process. Many of the musicians that played on the album including Pink Floyd’s bassist Guy Pratt and Black Grape’s percussionist Ged Lynch, he hadn’t met nor worked with before, adding to the freshness of the project.

"I took a few punts on people that I didn’t know much about and also the working environment. I took a big punt on this guy Shawn Lee because not many people had heard of him. I had heard of him through his loop CDs. He’s actually known in England as a session guitarist not as a drummer, so when I went to hire him they asked why! His manager wanted us to pay him up front. Everyone has really tough managers over there. The artist is always lovely but the managers are pricks."

Lloyd’s time in London was spent almost entirely working on the album with no real consideration of a social life. Fiennes and engineer Ric Featherstone refused to work on weekends due to family commitments leaving Lloyd alone to experiment and further develop his recording craft, honing his skills on ideas such as backward strings, upbeat melodies with serious lyrics, negative verses with positive choruses and so on.

"I’m at the point now I think, where if I have an idea, I can achieve it. I’m closer to achieving it in the studio" said Lloyd. "This time I wanted to go for a more natural sound so we used 16 track head blocks and put all the drums down like that, big 2 inch fat sounds. Then we threw all that into Pro Tools and edited, edited, edited for weeks. Then started doing the bass and the nice bits on top. Once we got the song to a finished level, bar perhaps a keyboard line or something, I’d put it all back to tape, just for a sense of completion. I prefer to be mixing off tape."

Now that the album has surfaced and the public has accepted it, Lloyd is pleased with the result. He’s not the kind to dwell on additional ideas he may or may not have used. Any afterthoughts are generally set aside for future projects, such as one fine multi-layered track he played down the phone line to me, a track that didn’t quite make it for "Angels".

"I think you have to let it go. You’ll always think I could have done this or that but you have to say, this is what it is. That’s what I have done with this album. I’m a very amateur painter as well, and I do that with my paintings too, but I’m more likely to pull it off the wall and start again. Whereas with my records, you do have to reach a point where you finish. That’s what I learned from the first one. I like to find sense of completion. I might have thrown a couple of vocal things back into ‘Tools’. There’s like an effects wash happening on ‘Downtown" in the middle eight. I threw that back into Pro Tools to trigger off all these reverbs" recalls Lloyd.

For most of the album Lloyd used a Maton guitar he has owned for quite some time and a 76’ Fender Telecaster through a Bandmaster amp for his electric needs. But it’ s a new guitar from Canadian company Garrison (Model G40CE), that he’s most excited about. The guitar is unique in that the bracing system, including bridge plate, braces, kerfing and binding are all constructed from one singular piece of glass fibre composite.

"It’s great, really good. It’s funny because when they first approached me I was pretty happy with my current guitar. I didn’t really need anything… but these things are just really good. With the plastic bracing… I don’t know if it’s because it’s got solid back and sides, but it doesn’t seem to feedback at all and it has heaps of power as well. For an acoustic guitar live, to cut through like that one does is quite rare. As soon as I played it, it made sense, and everyone comments on it now."

Lloyd is regarded by many as one of the finest young vocalists in Australian contemporary music, and with this album paid a lot more attention to his vocal delivery.

"I tell you what I did" said LLoyd, "I actually stood up while I was singing and it made a hell of a difference. Even to my pitching. I gave a bit more of my voice in this one too. I was going for more of a late night thing, laid back sitting around with your friends type of thing. I think it’s cool to give a bit more vocally. I’ll eventually end up like Jimmy Barnes screaming down the mike".

At time of print "Watching Angels Mend" had scaled to the number two position on the national charts and was heading for platinum sales. With a European release imminent I asked Alex how important the international markets are to him…

"I just want to make really good music and I want to do other things too. I mean, I have a much bigger set up for the record in England next year, so let’s see what happens. I don’t think I ever want to be as big as Britney Spears or Puff Daddy. I like the level Neil Finn is at. I just did a tour with him. He can do decent size shows. I see guys like Puff Daddy and they don’t seem to give back, they just take. That’s what it feels like anyway, maybe they do".