Album Review // Alex Lahey // The Answer is Always Yes

Liberation Music

4.25 / 5 Stars

If this isn't my favorite album of the year, it's certainly primed to be. Australian indie songwriter Alex Lahey is so perfectly on-target that it's, frankly, unsettling in the way that online advertising seems to be accurately reading your brain. An absolutely explicit break-up album filled with humor and hooks galore, The Answer is Always Yes is back-loaded with absolute bangers perfect for summer drives with the windows down. The main detriment to the record has to be, however, the first two songs. While they are both in a vacuum excellent, they draw such immediate comparisons to Courtney Barnett and Mitski that they serve to detract from the record as a whole. While Lahey has disparaged comparisons to Barnett, the similar meter of her delivery on this song (and this song alone) explicitly sounds like one of Barnett's bigger hits, while the second track has verses incredibly reminiscent of Mitski's "Why Didn't You Stop Me?" [note: These are two of my favorite artists of the last 10 years, so this is not intrinsically a bad thing whatsoever]. Everything after this is solid gold. Lahey's personality shines through, serving similar sounds to Illuminati Hotties, Belly, and Bully alike.