Few sentences in the English language may inspire a rollercoaster of youthful emotion like the title of Alex Lahey’s debut album, I Love You Like a Brother. It isn’t hard to picture some fresh-faced admirer, at first jubilant (“She loves me!”) and then utterly crestfallen (“…like a brother”). But the Melbourne artist’s song of the same name cleverly goes someplace that’s both less predictable and flatly literal: “I Love You Like a Brother” is a Ramones-blitzed bop about growing up enough to become friends with, well, her actual brother. But it’s not only that: With lines like “You don’t like sports and I don’t like dresses/Luckily for us our parents got the message,” it’s also about defying gender norms. Peppy, charming, and—here’s a word that comes up a lot in discussion of Lahey’s music—fun, the song is thankfully not at all like kissing your sister.
These types of dualities, right in front of your face yet delightfully unexpected, are an area where Lahey excels. “You Don’t Think You Like People Like Me,” from last year’s B-Grade University EP, was a stomping quiet-loud account of rejection that was too specific, too self-deprecating, and ultimately too euphoric to reject. So no one did: She won a crucial grant, competed her way to an Australian festival slot, and by earlier this year had signed with U.S. indie Dead Oceans, amid a daunting international touring schedule with bands like Tegan and Sara. I Love You Like a Brother is a remarkably focused set of sing-along choruses, punk-pop dynamics, and casually witty observations about relationships. If it never quite matches the breathlessness of that first impression, it confirms the 24-year-old music-degree dropout belongs on her globe-trotting trajectory.
Lahey is still best at dissecting relationships with at least a whiff of dysfunction about them. The midtempo “Backpack” again takes a familiar topic—a lover who always has one foot out the door—and captures it in an evocative new way: “It’s hard for me to put my arms around you when your backpack’s on,” Lahey sings on the yearning choruses, between verses stuffed with short-story detail. Almost as good, and perhaps more marketable, is recent single “I Haven’t Been Taking Care of Myself,” a sleek descendant of the Strokes’ “Last Nite” where an unwholesome rock’n’roll lifestyle, with its real-life side effects of drunken behavior and a few extra pounds, may explain “why you don’t love me as much.” Between discovering “you’re just a bit of a dick” on “Awkward Exchange,” casting a skeptical eye toward a lover’s Barbarella poster on “Lotto in Reverse,” or admiring a lovely western town despite a painful breakup there on “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Lahey brightly sugarcoats enough different hues of romantic ennui for a bag of tropical Skittles.
The songs on I Love You Like a Brother usually arrive as a giddy rush, so when relationships are going well, there’s a risk of exuberance overload. “Every Day’s the Weekend” is celebratory down to its clapping and backing shouts, but Lahey keeps it all from going too far, keenly monitoring the uncertainties of new love even as she encourages jumping in: “My hands are cold, but my feet are not,” she exults. The musical palette widens on “I Want U,” with sweeping strings and a surf-tinged guitar hook, recalling 1960s girl groups along with 2000s revivalists like the Pipettes. “Let’s Call It a Day” is a boozy kiss-off that veers from the Drifters shimmy to Paramore stadium anthem—just when it seems like it may be overshadowed by better breakup songs, a barbed line like “I kinda like you but I don’t like you/You like yourself too much” has a million everyday applications.
In early September, a national vote began in Australia on whether to allow same-sex marriage. Perhaps the starkest indication of Lahey’s knack for in-plain-sight subtlety, and a sign of how her music could continue to grow on further albums, is I Love You Like a Brother’s finale, a strummy drum-machine ballad called “There’s No Money.” Amid reflections on millennial economic malaise, she quietly asserts: “We can’t marry even if we want to.” Lahey has acknowledged the line refers to the marriage debate in her home country, but she has a way of weaving such issues into the fabric of an entire vividly-described life. “It’s never really been something I’ve felt I have to address in a song or had to unpack,” she told the NME. “I think everyone’s experience of their sexuality should be that way.” Lahey’s songs thrive on idiosyncrasies, not generalities, so it makes sense that sexuality for her would be one part of a person’s character, not the full portrait. Still, while the singer’s first full-length is consistently likable, it is most lovable at its especially individual turns.
