For Alex Lahey, life these days is all about risk. That head-first mindset is apparent from the title of The Answer Is Always Yes, her third studio album. The Answer Is Always Yes sees Lahey approaching her music in a new way, inviting other writers and producers into her early creative process. It also included saying yes to a new direction, pivoting from her focus on relationships to analysing her "otherness" in different ways, navigating isolating through surrealism and humour.
As a queer person and the child of migrants, Lahey quickly came to terms with the fact that the word is not made for most people — on The Answer Is Always Yes, she finds comfort, laughter and even acceptance in that fact. An album all about learning to adapt and feeling comfortable in uncomfortable spaces, it offers a variety of moods and emotions — the music whisks you away in a vintage convertible on a highway with teenage, Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless-style friends who are all on a mission to find themselves.
Each track is relatable in its own way, with "Congratulations" recounting the emotions of having two separate exes get married in a '90s punk rock style and "The Sky Is Melting" offering the aftermath of too many weed gummies with a more pensive, melancholic beat. Lead single "Good Time," is a country-pop exploration of looking for something new in the mundane routine of life, from sitting in a local watering hole to traffic on the way home. "I just want a good time / Don't care how," Lahey sings. "But I know everybody needs it."
The whole album is chock full of songs that scream road trips and beach days, pulling from a grungier vision of Sheryl Crow and latter-day Liz Phair's fun-loving pop rock, shot through with a synthesised yet vulnerable twinge that was already apparent on Lahey's first two albums. It's an exploration of new aspects of Lahey's craft that doesn't lose the backbone of what makes her unique.
The Answer is Always Yes is a proud document of Lahey's current place in life and in the world, as an artist who is okay with taking risks but still feeling herself out. "I feel like if you're saying yes and you're exploring, you're always moving," Lahey said ahead of the album's release. "That's the part of life that I'm in right now. I just don't wanna stop."
(Liberation)As a queer person and the child of migrants, Lahey quickly came to terms with the fact that the word is not made for most people — on The Answer Is Always Yes, she finds comfort, laughter and even acceptance in that fact. An album all about learning to adapt and feeling comfortable in uncomfortable spaces, it offers a variety of moods and emotions — the music whisks you away in a vintage convertible on a highway with teenage, Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless-style friends who are all on a mission to find themselves.
Each track is relatable in its own way, with "Congratulations" recounting the emotions of having two separate exes get married in a '90s punk rock style and "The Sky Is Melting" offering the aftermath of too many weed gummies with a more pensive, melancholic beat. Lead single "Good Time," is a country-pop exploration of looking for something new in the mundane routine of life, from sitting in a local watering hole to traffic on the way home. "I just want a good time / Don't care how," Lahey sings. "But I know everybody needs it."
The whole album is chock full of songs that scream road trips and beach days, pulling from a grungier vision of Sheryl Crow and latter-day Liz Phair's fun-loving pop rock, shot through with a synthesised yet vulnerable twinge that was already apparent on Lahey's first two albums. It's an exploration of new aspects of Lahey's craft that doesn't lose the backbone of what makes her unique.
The Answer is Always Yes is a proud document of Lahey's current place in life and in the world, as an artist who is okay with taking risks but still feeling herself out. "I feel like if you're saying yes and you're exploring, you're always moving," Lahey said ahead of the album's release. "That's the part of life that I'm in right now. I just don't wanna stop."
