Normally these blog entries are one of the few things I don’t write while wearing a suit, but today is different. Today is Remembrance Day, and when I’m done here, I’m heading down to the service.
The splendid ideals of democracy are worth defending, but they are not secure unless we are willing to stand up for them. No one has paid a higher price for the freedom we enjoy than our veterans – both the living who came home and the war dead who did not. Today is their day. Please take some time in quiet contemplation to honour their sacrifice.
Disc 1689 is…The Best of Luck Club
Artist: Alex Lahey
Year of Release: 2019
What’s up with the Cover? Alex Lahey waits outside what looks like an interdimensional portal to a place called the “Best of Luck Club”. I’d like this club to be a nifty after-hours club, where they play big band jazz and drink clandestine cocktails. However, this waiting room reminds me more of a dentist’s office. If Alex is lucky, there may be some existential detectives on the other side of the door, ready to help her through why life is meaningless. If she’s unlucky, it’ll just be some grim faced dude with an eyepatch, rolling a die and deciding her fate with the outcome. How do I know this? The crow's a hint.
Anyway, that was weighty. Let’s get on with the music, shall we?
How I Came To Know It: Earlier this year I checked out Alex Lahey’s 2023 release, “The Answer Is Always Yes”. I liked it and set about trying to find it on CD, but so far I’ve had no luck. Along the way I dug into her back catalogue and liked that as well, buying two albums that I was able to locate. This is one of them.
How It Stacks Up: If you’re reading along with care you now know I own two of the three Alex Lahey albums I’d like to have. Since I don’t stack up albums that are absentee, I’ll rank “The Best of Luck Club” out of two where it comes in at…#2.
Rating: 2 stars but almost 3
Alt rock singer Alex Lahey is not terribly innovative, and while I enjoyed “The Best of Luck Club” I kept wanting it to wow me, and it kept just plugging along down the centre of the road, oblivious to my wishes. There are plenty of good tunes and rock hooks here, just don’t expect to hear something you haven’t heard before.
“I Don’t Get Invited to Parties Anymore” gets the album started right, sounding a lot like a nineties throwback party tune. Lahey’s cleverness here is that this is a song that sounds like it is ready to party, even while the lyrics explore how partying is just not where her head is at.
The record has a lot of angst, and in that way reminded me of grunge, but with crisp pop production to let you know it is OK to have fun and tap your foot (it was never alright to tap your foot to grunge – being morose was the price of admission back then).
The production on the record is solid, if a bit “wall of sound” for my tastes. Most of the quieter moments are just that pop trick of stripping stuff down so the chorus is more of a thumper.
Lyrically, I felt let down often. Lahey has great phrasing, and the lines fit just right within the structure of the tune that makes it easy to sing along. That part is fun, but I was not left with a sense of narrative or character, and while she plays around with specific imagery it is light on metaphor. People who are sad, cry. People who are busy, are working. Not a lot of flowers representing a garden representing the state of the narrator’s heart.
I enjoyed most of the arrangements, but there is some uncalled-for saxophone on “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself” that I must specifically call out. Is your name Clarence Clemons? If not, don’t do that.
My favourite tune on the record is “Unspoken History” which isn’t surprising, as I’m often a sucker for a record’s ballad. “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn”? Classic. Change nothing. Anyway, “Unspoken History” is light, slow and romantic in a syrup-adjacent kind of way, but I didn’t mind. Lahey’s high head voice in the chorus will melt your heart and make you think fondly of whoever it is you love.
That said, I did a lot of “sure” and “OK I guess” while listening to most of the tracks, and at this stage, facing space challenges throughout the living room, dining room and most recently down the hallway, I would like more out of my record collection than just OK.
There is nothing objectively wrong with this record; it is solid rock and roll that I hope gets played on local Australian radio stations. It just didn’t inspire me. After the Odyssey is done with it, when and how often will I put this record on? Not very often, I suspect.
And so, I wish Alex Lahey the best of luck with “the Best of Luck Club” and will pass this one along to a happier home.
Best tracks: I Don’t Get Invited to Parties Anymore, Interior Demeanour, Unspoken History
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