Customer Reviews

Amazing: Best of

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For people not familiar with Australia's Alex Lloyd, I'll just mention some other acts that have done stuff that is in Lloyd's ball park:

Coldplay, Tim Finn [of Split Enz and Crowded House], Tears For Fears, Bic Runga, Dido, Peter Gabriel and The Corrs.

I basically bought this album because I knew that apart from one song I knew to be great [Amazing], there was another song I quite liked [Green], and a track that I remembered liking from before Lloyd's Watching Angels Mend cd.

I don't think I found that early song-or, if I did, it didn't impress me much as it did then. Alternatively, there could be a good Lloyd song which hasn't been included and should have been included.

Anyway, since listening to this album, I must say that the song I would have listed as the best song on this album [Amazing], has been knocked down to the bronze medal position.

The best three tracks on this album are:

Green

Beautiful

Amazing

Lloyd has a lazy vocal technique which means his lyrics are often hard to make out. The only flaw of the sublime song "green" is that it's so beautiful you want to sing along, but many of the lyrics are mumbled and not easy to make out.

"Green" is a highly polished pop gem-it swings and sways. It's possibly the greatest pop song of all time. I rate it right up there with Tears For Fears "Head over heels" and The Beatles "Hey Jude". It's that good.

"Amazing" has some great overlapping singing by Lloyd at the end too. "Beautiful" is aptly named.

As for the rest of this cd it's a mixture of accoustic songs, including piano, with some more random songs, including songs that sound techno. There is some nice experimenting with songs too, e.g. Momo has a nice bit of Japanase spoken word for the intro and outro. The song My Way Home has some fx reminescent of War Of The Worlds. Some songs give a nod or a wink to major figures in music, e.g. Downtown features the lyric "Vanish in the haze" which is a line from The Beatles' song Yesterday.

The second cd on this compilation is B sides and rareities. It's what makes this compilation a four star one instead of three and half [for the three songs I really like]. I like to consider the second cd as the kind of cd you'd play in a nice, hot bath, or on a dinner date. It's mostly gentle, mellow, accoustic songs. The second track reminded me a bit of Gorillaz. Some other tracks reminded me of a Blondie song or a Neil Young song. The second cd also features covers of two Beatles' songs, I think, and an Elvis Presley song as well, I think.

Overall, Amazing, Beautiful and Green are some of the most sublime pop songs ever recorded. The second cd is a nice, inoffensive bit of music that makes for good background music when you don't want to be distracted by the kind of killer pop songs the first cd has.

*** Other Australian cds I've reviewed at this site:

Skyhooks: The collection

INXS: "Kick" and "Listen like thieves" and "Anthology"

Midnight Oil: "10,...,1" and "Diesel and dust" and others

John Farnham: The great Australian songbook

Johnny O'Keefe: Birth of Australian rock'n'roll

The Saints: Know your product-the best of

Rogue Traders: Here comes the drums

If you compare the list of songs available in the download to the original CD: Amazing: The Best of Alex Lloyd, you'll notice the CD has two more tracks than what's listed for the downloadable version, above. The tracks "Never Meant to Fail" and "Wonder" got dropped, making this an incomplete product.