Alex Lahey interview - Best of Luck Club Tour
Alex Lahey in concert at the Great Scott. Photograph: Hamish Nicholson/ Ana Georgescu
We all knew that one badass gal as kids, the one who tousled your hair when passing by with her guitar case, jean jacket and shades. That’s why I feel like I have seen Alex Lahey before. She’s got that cool older sibling aura, the charisma of a rockstar, and the calm of a seasoned performer, all tied together with a charming Australian accent. She is on tour promoting her second album, “The Best of Luck Club”, and I am meeting her before the concert at the Great Scott in Allston.
I had seen her concert date listed back in spring, but Alex Lahey was not a new name to me. Her first EP, “B-grade University” had been one of my proud internet findings in 2017, with “You don’t think you like people like me’s” clever lyrics and whimsical pop-punk tunes. The album “I Love You Like A Brother” debuted the same year with memorable songs like “Every Day’s the Weekend” and “I Haven’t Been Taking Care of Myself” sending her into albums-of-the-year lists on Bandcamp and Noisey. For 2019, Alex Lahey took the Nashville dive bars by storm in search of inspiration and resurfaced with “The Best of Luck Club”, an ode to the joyful toasts and growing pains of the mid-20s. Its exhaustive brochure of relatable experiences and relationships does not shy away from discussing mental health, romance, lost friends, vibrators, proving yourself and burning out. Listening to it feels like catching up with an old friend in a bar, like an authentic and vulnerable exchange that you wish could last for hours. It’s a therapy session disguised as a lively night out.
With such an uncompromising vision and jubilant melodies, Alex found a creative partner in a fellow Melbournian, producer Catherine Marks. The album was released in May and has received favorable reviews from both critics and audiences. The eponymous tour has already started and will be covering both Australia and the United States. Today, she’s chatting with me about it, from behind a pair of black Ray Bans, wearing a jean jacket with a yellow “Born to Be Mild” patch.
AG: Welcome! It’s good to have you over here in Boston and congratulations on the new album! Everything about it, the songs themselves, the concept, the imagery around it, is all very cohesive while touching on so many topics. How was the process of writing it?
Alex Lahey: Thank you very much, that’s so kind! I think it wasn't as daunting as I thought it would be. I was scared that going into the second album could potentially mean being too reflective and that being a hindrance in the process itself. But it was actually pretty organic and I think it spoke to the fact that I really like writing songs. It was not about trying to do better than anything before, do anything super different or super the same or whatever - it was an enjoyably creative process. I am sure it won’t be the case with every record I make in my life, which I hope is many, and of course there’s gonna be different characteristics of the experience. But for this one, it was enjoyable and great, nice to know that I could designate time to writing songs which historically for me has been something I just...do. Oh, I have some time now, I’ll write some. But in the last few years of my life, so many things have changed to the point where I need to be more disciplined, more diligent and I’m glad I now know I am capable of that.
AG: Did you go to Nashville specifically for that, saying “I’m here to write music”?
Alex Lahey: Yeah, totally! Because I’m away from home so much, when I go back, I just want to be at home, not work. I need to do ‘me’ among it all. So when I knew I was going into the studio to make this record, I obviously didn’t have the songs, but I knew I was going to do it in Nashville, why not? It’s the historical songwriting capital of the world.
We’re sitting outside of the Great Scott, close to hanging pots of purple petunias and not far enough from the honking on Commonwealth Avenue. The venue’s staff is out for a coffee and cigarette break, talking in noticeable Boston accents, so Alex and I chat about where we’re each from. Hamish, my photographer, shares her hometown of Melbourne and they take turns naming high schools and coffee shops. I ask about touring.
Alex Lahey: Touring is awesome. It’s something that takes practice and no two hours of the tour are the same. It’s such a personal thing, it’s really hard at times, but through all the challenges you get the experiences you wouldn't have otherwise: crazy encounters with people, friends you make along the way, dumb inside jokes with people in the van. For all of the wonderful comes the challenging, and vice-versa. I think I have a good relationship with touring, but I do understand it’s not for everyone. Nothing is for everyone, but I am really lucky to fall into the group of people who actually get off on the challenges of it.
AG: How is it different from playing at home?
Alex Lahey: I’ve been playing in Australia for longer and a lot more than I’ve ever played over here, so obviously those crowds are different in terms of the ways they look and feel comparatively. At the same time, there are small cultural things that you experience here in the US, even from city to city, it’s so interesting to see how people respond to music and the different crowds and spaces you find yourself in.
AG: You’ve talked about the Best of Luck Club and the idea of dive bars. We’re in a bar, share a song’s story with us.
Alex Lahey: “I Don't Get Invited To Parties Anymore” is the opening song of the record and people have said it’s surely about being away from home and touring all the time, and if you wanna read into it that way it’s fine, but really it’s sort of about when we’re moving through life, and through high school, and college, and all of these places that facilitate our relationships for us. When that is taken away from you once you leave those systems, you have to let relationships fend for themselves. Friendships, specifically. It’s up to you and whomever you’re in the friendship with. Thinking of it like a hot air balloon floating away, you guys are on the ground and are pulling the basket back down, but you do need two people to hold on to it. So the song is about allowing yourself to let the balloon go when it’s over, but wanting it to stay and waiting on the other person to want that too. That’s something we all experience.
AG: If we were to introduce someone to AL, what song should we send them, what is a representative song?
Alex Lahey: I don't know, if I think about sharing music with other people - it is such an expression of yourself and when you send music, whether you wanna impress them or convince them to get into it, or maybe challenge them, it depends on who you are and who that person is. I'd like to think that there hopefully is something in my catalog that most people can connect to and say ‘this is what I want to show of myself to someone else through this song.’ So I think it's different from person to person. If it was me, "Interior Demeanor" is a little bit edgy and a little bit weirder than some of the other songs.
Interior Demeanor debuts with a palm-muted chord progression as Alex quietly describes her initial mental state after the breakup of a tumultuous relationship. It’s a rhythmic monotony well-suited for the entrapment of a seemingly never-ending emotional hangover. The chorus comes as an explosive relief from it, acknowledging that time will be the ultimate remedy. This alternation of tension and respite continues throughout the track, making Interior Demeanor a mature and hopeful account of the internal reflection necessary in trying times.
Alex Lahey in the “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself” music video. Directed by Callum Preston.
AG: You've only released one music video for this album, should we be looking forward to more?
Alex Lahey: Yeah, we're definitely working on some more. We've kind of been doing like a bit of a different approach to it. I don't love being in front of the camera that much. We obviously did the "Don't be so hard on yourself" video, which was super fun. But then we did a live acoustic video for "Unspoken History", which is something a bit different. There is a live video coming out of "Misery Guts". Hopefully we will be doing more similar things along the way, but we've been taking a more unorthodox approach to the videos on this particular record, which has been quite fun. I would love to one day have a record where we can create four or five videos threaded together in a narrative, but it's a bit of a pipe dream at this point.
AG: You play almost all of the instruments on the album, including the sax.
Alex Lahey: Yeah, everything but the drums. You will actually get to see the sax tonight. (- AG: and we did!)
AG: Who's with the band tonight? Tell me a little bit about the people you play with.
Alex Lahey: I'm really lucky on this tour, I'm playing with four other people. Jess Ellwood came down with me from Melbourne, she's an amazing drummer and she plays me around the world. Liv Slinger plays guitar, Genna Projansky plays bass and Kerri Stewart plays keys, all three based in Los Angeles. They're all buddies from the US whom I've met along the way, playing in LA over the past few years. It's just a matter of making friends who happen to be really great musicians and wonderful to work with. I've been very, very lucky and it's just been an absolute blast having them on tour.
AG: You perform and record as Alex Lahey, but you have referred to it as the Alex Lahey project before. Is that because you're trying to separate the art from the artist? Or are you planning on ever writing under a different name?
Alex Lahey: I think probably a bit of both. I think the Alex Lahey Project is one part of who I am as an artist. I feel like there's a lot of things that I want to explore in my career and I don't want to have to box it into some sort of cohesion for the sake of putting it under my name. Maybe in hindsight, it was a mistake to name the project as myself, but I'm also glad that I did. Hopefully it's one thing of many that I work on in my lifetime. It's exciting to use this as a springboard for a whole bunch of other stuff that I can do in the future, while at the same time compartmentalizing it a little bit and allowing it to have its own space. It's like having a house, like if I were a house. Every bedroom is a different place, but they all exist under the same roof. I usually go in and out of the Alex Lahey thing. At the moment I'm excited to get really deep into it, but I'm always open to see what else happens.
AG: Have you thought about who'd you ideally collaborate with in the future?
Alex Lahey: Oh, yeah, totally! There's definitely a big list of people, but I think it's also a matter of, you know, putting yourself forward in that way, while also allowing people to come to you. I just want to work with people who really want to nurture songs and music, and want to do it in a way that isn't just checking the boxes and hoping for a hit or to get on the radio. I'm not interested in that approach to things, never have been. At the end of the day, it's about who actually wants to make good music.
Lahey was also featured on Taylor Swift’s ‘Playlist by ME!’ Apple Music playlist, an honor she does not take lightly. She has been however posting some playlists of her own on Twitter, titling them Van Jams, a mix of classics and newcomers. I ask for some recommendations, particularly from the Aussie scene.
Alex Lahey: An artist I love is one of my very close friends, Eilish Gilligan. She's in the very early phases of her career, although she's been chipping away at it for many, many years to the point that, when it eventually all comes together, she's gonna hit the ground running. She's got the 10,000 hours behind her, it's just a matter of time before that plays out and I am very excited for her. I feel like I've been saying this for ages, but the last Australian record that I was like, truly, truly in love with was Emma Louise's "Lilac Everything." It's such an incredible album and it's kind of like nothing that anyone has ever heard before. Truly, it's quite an incredible set of recordings and she has a great personality and the music is just stunning.
AG: So what are you doing after the tour?
Alex Lahey: After the tour I'm going home. I've been away for a couple of months, so I'm really excited about going back for a little bit. I've managed to miss the winter, it's been nice to live through an endless summer. I'm going into a regional tour in Australia, which will be fun going to like a bunch of places I've never even heard of, let alone been to. And the plan is to write another album by the end of the year.
Well, best of luck! And I immediately cringe at myself, thinking of how much she hears that joke these days, but Alex quickly assures me that it's what she intended.
Later that night, she walks on stage, getting ready to perform, when My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” comes on through the venue’s speakers. The crowd starts singing along, her and her bandmates lead the charge. The sound engineer tries to turn it down, expecting Alex to start her set, but she signals them to wait for the end. Encouraged by that, the audience sings louder. “Should we just go home now? Let the entire gig be just that?” she jokes and launches into “Every Day’s the Weekend.”
It’s not the first time this 2017 single has been heard at the Great Scott. Alex confesses that she has a connection to this crowd and the city of Boston, as it was also the location of one of her very first concerts in the United States. “Is there anyone here who was at my first show?” Exactly four people raise their hands. “Yeah, so everyone!” There is love for Lahey and her band in the room. In front of me, a girl takes a Snapchat and captions it ‘my wife is about to go on stage and I am about to evaporate,’ saves and sends it.
And she is the coolest. Twitter says she once eyed someone eating instant noodles at her gig and rewarded them with a shirt. But don’t let the cool trick you, Alex is thoughtful and detailed. Every night, the daytime black denim is swapped for the red jacket she sports on the album cover, in keeping with the cohesive imagery of the tour. Her sound is polished, her band’s performance is clockwork - she puts you under her spell.
Right by the door of the venue at the end of the show, her friend is manning the merch stand. I had already acquired the vinyl, having foreseen its inevitable sell out, but I am now lining up to get it autographed. Alex takes her time with everyone, thanking them for coming. “How did you like it?” I launch into a laudative rant, but I can see that she is infinitely humble. I leave the Great Scott with a new dose of excitement for the young adult life, a perfectly signed vinyl, and a new interest in iron-on patches.
You can now find Alex Lahey’s sophomore album on all streaming platforms and on her wesbite, https://thebestofluckclub.com/.
