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“So you think I came to England and brought two guitars?”

So said Sydney’s Alex Lloyd, two songs into his set last night on breaking a string. “No, I only brought one, ’cause I couldn’t be arsed to carry two”. He recovered well, though, sending his roadie (a spectacularly underemployed chap, given that there was only Lloyd, his acoustic guitar and his keyboard player onstage, who had spent almost the entire half hour it had somehow taken to set things up taping up some leads with gaffer tape) out the back to grab him a stack of spare strings. Lloyd then proceeded to perform the impressive feat of stringing and tuning his guitar while singing the next song, something that he repeated later in the gig after breaking a second string. (Presumably it was only the fact that it was a different string that prevented him from having to finish the gig with just five remaining on his guitar).

As I mentioned the other week, this was our first visit to the Brixton Academy. Sorry, the Brixton Academy Islington. We arrived at the venue just behind TNT magazine, which would be reviewing the gig after finishing her bagel (“outside, thanks love”). No such food-related incidents preventing our entry, we ventured inside, to discover a room even smaller than I’d expected it to be, and almost unbearably hot for most of the gig, until half way through when the bouncer at the side of the stage decided to open the doors to cheers from the section of the crowd within range of the air flow and a sense of relief all round.

Apart from the overpowering heat, and despite his inconsiderate decision to play a whole pile of stuff off his first album, the one I don’t have, the gig was great. No Everybody’s Laughing, but we did get Amazing, Hello The End, Black The Sun, Green, My Friend, 1000 Miles, and a rousing Coming Home, amongst others. He’s a remarkably laid back performer, strolling casually onstage, nonchalantly finishing his cigarette before getting started, but then launching into a performance of ever-so-slightly slower acoustic versions of his songs that a proper reviewer might describe as emotional or powerful. Let’s just say it’s inoffensive, melodic, guitar rock and leave it at that. As I said earlier, I’m not sure that playing a single, largely unpromoted, UK date to around 800 Aussie and NZ backpackers, me and the two other English blokes in the venue (who were standing in front of us) is quite going to break him over here, but then maybe that wasn’t the point at all, and it was just an excuse for him to have a holiday over here.

On the way home we topped off the surreal experience of going to a gig in a shopping centre by popping over the road into Sainsbury’s to pick up some groceries. Rock and Roll!

Oh, there’s only so many photos you can take of a slightly chubby chap playing acoustic guitar, but some of the ones I did take are here.