Duncan Lloyd
As guitarist with Maximo Park, Duncan Lloyd has worked alongside his bandmates as they collectively sculpt their brilliantly angular, romantic songs, working hard in the studio to make their albums sound the best they can. For his first solo release, however, Lloyd has changed his approach.
The songs are all his this time, along with the words, which he's singing himself for the first time. Studio production has been minimal, however, simply a process to get those songs down on tape, while the original idea is still fresh, so the charm of the song remains vital, intact. "I guess the album's the sound of someone writing songs," he suggests, "Capturing that initial excitement of a new idea, and sharing that with the listener."
Lloyd is intimately familiar with that excitement, forever finding new melodies and ideas within the six strings of his guitar. Typically, he'd save these up and share them with his band-mates, for Maximo Park song-writing sessions.
Sometimes, though, caught up in the heat of the creative moment, he'd pull out his home recording gear and get straight to work, to get the idea down on tape. "Not being a natural singer, I'd just go with the feel of the songs," he remembers. But he soon found himself enamoured by the raw charm of these scratch recordings. "Once you get something down on tape that you like, you don't really want to change it."
As months passed, Lloyd found himself with a growing collection of such tracks. "I didn't really plan to make a solo album, and certainly not so soon, but I guess I had developed a backlog of songs. People around me were telling me I should put the songs out. So I did."
Such simplicity is the hallmark of this endearing and addictive record. Lloyd says songwriting sessions with Maximo Park can be productively intense, ideas pounded into shape by the group's five members, changing arrangements and trying to push as many envelopes as they can.
By contrast, the solo album was "very much a case of writing a song, and then recording it as soon as possible, with the most natural arrangement. The idea would come first; it was more instinctive, I wasn't trying to develop the songs."
Lloyd recorded most of the instruments himself, although the music contained herein – the explosive dynamics and nagging guitar interplay of 'Misfit', the chiming, cerebral power-pop of '7 letters' – sounds like the work of a living, breathing, sweating rock band.
Maximo Park drummer Tom English added live drums to eight of the ten tracks, playing over the drum-machine parts Lloyd had already recorded. "He took two afternoons to record them all," says Lloyd. "I played him the songs once, gave him one or two run throughs, and then he'd record over the original drum machine parts. You can sort of hear them bleed through in places, and I kept those moments in there, because it was sort of a record of how those songs were born."
Such moments help make the album such an intimate pleasure, balancing out the perfect-pop songwriting Lloyd displays on songs like 'Make Our Escape' (a sun-dappled dash of murmured harmonies, whimsical jangle, and breath-stealing chord changes), 'Suzee' (a playful and puzzling sort-of-love-song, juggling nursery rhyme verses and a surging chorus), and the sleepy, radiant 'Nightfly'.
Reference points are cast all about, nods to Wire, to Guided By Voices, to Eugene Kelly, to the wiry Beatles of Revolver-era. But most of all, the album sounds the work of Duncan Lloyd, every homely track bearing his instinctive thumbprint.
While work continues apace on the third Maximo Park album, Duncan is planning a series of low-key shows across the UK to promote the album, having already debuted his live rhythm section at a handful of unannounced shows.
"It was pretty nerve-wracking," he admits, of taking the microphone for the first time, "It was a challenge more than anything. I sing backing vocals with Maximo Park, but to actually go ahead and do this, I had to learn how to use my voice to express the song idea. Sometimes it's a bit out of tune, but like the album, that's all part of the charm, I guess."
Lloyd guesses right. Perfect imperfection seems his game and, on his debut album, there's not a bum note out of place, not a song that isn't blessed, rather than cursed, by the album's deftly-played, dextrously homespun warm pop sound. He shouldn't change a thing.