The Lloyd Pack - I Bet You've Got Some Good Stories

The Lloyd Pack is a long-standing Dan Melchior vehicle in which he combines forces with, amongst a few others, The Pheromoans' Russell Walker. Melchior, being the force of unnature he is, will be the main selling point for most, and he doesn't disappoint of course, serving up a platter of down-the-stairs melodic clatter and Swell Maps klanky abstraction that serves as its own lesson in DIY art damaged self-determination. As always. But don't be fooled, this one's a joint effort. Russell Walker is a man who once composed an entire record about the Campbell pub in Coventry (a place that barely deserves a song, let alone a full album) and will forever be for me a man of confused endearing quality. There's a lot of voices on the radio right now doing the sprechgesang, and while i don't imagine The Lloyd Pack are gonna get anywhere near The BBC6Music, Walker should be a lesson for them all. His barely in tune speak-sing delivery is the ideal agent for a persona that's both smartarse and a funny fucker. But you know how every joke hides a strange sadness? Well, so does Walker, good with the pathos as he is, and great at extending out banal observations (on age, and lost time, and Dry January) into accidental epiphanies and his own kind of abstracted profoundity. Proper voice of a degeneration stuff. You don't always get the one you want, but sometimes you get the one you need.