Alex Lahey
The Answer Is Always Yes (Liberation)
Contact Sam McAllister about Alex Lahey
Alex Lahey presents “The Sky Is Melting,” the new and final single from her forthcoming album, The Answer Is Always Yes, out May 19th on Liberation. Following an exhilarating stream of singles, Lahey slows down the pace on “The Sky Is Melting,” putting her gift for melody and captivating storytelling in full focus. Like much of The Answer Is Always Yes, “The Sky Is Melting” sees Lahey examining how she finds comfort in the discomfort, whether its reveling in absurdity or turning towards exploration. This time, she’s reveling in the chaos of consuming too many weed gummies. “I went to the desert and did a bunch of edibles and wrote a song about it,” Lahey says. “Definitely not the first person in the world to do it. But maybe it’s the first song to reference both Michael Bolton and an unnamed verified AirBnB host in the same verse.”
Later this month, Lahey will kick off a North American tour in support of The Answer Is Always Yes, bringing her captivating full-band performance to a slew of cities across the continent. A full schedule is below and tickets are on sale now.
Where Lahey’s beloved debut I Love You Like A Brother and its 2019 follow-up The Best of Luck Club took their focus through the lens of relationships, The Answer Is Always Yes sees Lahey analyzing her otherness through different lenses, from its isolating effect to the surrealism and humor it instills. As a queer person, Lahey learned how to adapt to a world that wasn’t made for her, to pave her own way, foster her own community, and create her own joy. “Living in a world that wasn’t made for you makes you pretty strong and adaptive, and you find the fun in it,” says Lahey. “It also makes you realize how absurd everything is. With The Answer Is Always Yes, I wanted to get weird because the world is weird, and it’s even weirder when you realize you don’t fit into it all the time.”
Just as Lahey learned to reimagine the world around her, the music of The Answer Is Always Yes is also the product of reimagination. For the first time in her career, Lahey took a risk by inviting other writers and producers into the early stages of her creative process. The result is not only Lahey’s most collaborative album yet, but also the most dynamic and surprising. “I’ve made two records doing it all by myself and now I’ve proved to myself that I can do it,” Lahey says. “But it was also at a point where I was like, ‘If I do that again, I kind of know what it’s gonna sound like’ and I don’t think I’m interested in that right now.”
Both as a proud fringe dweller and an artist, Lahey has witnessed the benefits of taking risks and experimenting, and The Answer Is Always Yes — whose title has become a mantra for her — is living proof. “I feel like if you’re saying yes and you’re exploring, you’re always moving,” Lahey says. “That’s the part of life that I’m in right now. I just don’t wanna stop.”
