Un buen disco de rock, sin mucho más que decir. Magnífico guitarrista. No esperes que suene como Televisión porque entonces te va a decepcionar. De hecho, y en mi opinión, ni Tom Verlaine ni él volvieron a alcanzar el nivel de Marquee Moon ni de Adventure.
Good Disc By Television Guitarist, Richard Lloyd. Tom Verlaine Got All The Attention, But Richard Did A Lot Of The Heavy Riffing. I Hope Lloyd's Other Solo Studio Disc Will Be Re-released Soon @ Popular Prices. "Alchemy" Was Lloyd's Solo Debut.
I could give it a 5 star review just for the title cut. That alone is worth the price of admission. But there are 9 songs on the album, 3 of them I didn't find up to Richard's standards. Or maybe just mine. 6 of the cuts are glorious. IMO among the best in his body of work. Anybody's body of work for that matter.
I would love to hear this album as all instrumental tracks. I would even love to hear just the main guitar riffs isolated from the rest of the songs. Richard Lloyd is one of rock's all-time great guitarists, and what he did with Tom Verlaine and their duelling guitars in Television is sublime. But Lloyd was never meant to be a chief songwriter or lead vocalist. His vocal melodies on these otherwise driving, powerful songs are tired and flat, and they bring things down. And his voice - well, you don't have to be a classically-trained singer to be effective taking the lead vocals in a rock and roll outfit, but your voice has to have something about it that makes it worth listening to; Lloyd comes up painfully short on that count. Having made those complaints, I know I will still listen to this album many more times, simply because some of the guitar playing is so great it almost makes up for the other shortcomings of the effort.