27 year old Melbourne punk pop singer-songwriter Alex Lahey burst onto the scene in 2017 with her debut album ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ with its winningly driving, jaunty rock songs. With her first album especially, Lahey most obviously draws comparisons to fellow punk pop goddesses The Donnas and their legendary 70’s progenitors, Joan Jett’s first band The Runaways. ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ was more characteristic with the same kind of spiky, grittily ironic observational social realist commentary that JJJ loves, in other words, pure indie rock.

This is the kind of writing we usually associate with the great, biting, witty British songsmiths such as Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, Morrissey, Kirsty MacColl, Billy Bragg and even the scorching stream-of-consciousness rants of Transvision Vamp’s Wendy James. And that’s by no means a bad thing, these are all great artists and it’s a wonderful tradition that Lahey’s joining. In Australian punk, more recently there are The Skeggs and The Chats as well as 90’s greats, Frenzal Rhomb, Grinspoon and Spiderbait. With second album ‘The Best Of Luck Club’, Lahey mostly abandons the punk pop for a more lyrical and gentle indie pop and alternative rock sound as well as some more mainstream radio rock sounding songs.

It’s a much softer sound for the most part and explores far more diverse musical styles than Lahey’s debut, more in line with Courtney Barnett although a lot more sonically lush and less stripped back than Barnett 90’s alt rock queens Juliana Hatfield, The Plums and Veruca Salt and even Canadian power rockers Heart. Another fine tradition, just quite a different one to that evoked by Lahey’s first album. ‘The Best Of Luck Club’ is at times a far more romantic, emotionally and sonically lush album than ‘I Love You Like A Brother’, such as songs like  ‘Am I Doing It Right?’, ‘Unspoken History’, as a ballad without drums, a first for Alex Lahey, ‘Black RM’s and the very romantic and emotional album closer, ‘I Want To Live With You’.

There are a couple of straight out punk pop bangers such as ‘Misery Guts’ ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself’, which surprisingly includes a saxophone solo in the instrumental break reminiscent of that in ‘When Tomorrow Comes’ by Eurythmics of all things, although saxophone cheese has been the millennial retro chic fashion de jour in some indie circles.

Lahey even branches into a littling piano stomp in ‘Isabella’ a la ‘Thankyou for Loving Me At My Worst’ by The Whitlams, a complete departure from the punk pop origins of her first album, although just as much fun.

‘I Need To Move On’ is an aching, yearning power guitar rock track documenting the loss and sentimentality of moving on and leaving a past love, self and life behind, capturing the emotional tension, romance of melancholy of simultaneously moving on and being emotionally stuck in a recent but rapidly fading past.  It’s a really sweet, moving song. ‘Black RM’s’ as in RM Williams boots, uses the motif, never mentioned in the song, as a hook in to the subject of the song, her devotion to her loved one, in a style much closer to the 90’s female alternative greats and again, a complete departure from punk pop, even a little Arctic Monkeys in its melodic but reasonably heavy rock.

‘Unspoken History’, that mould-breaking, drum free, guitar and piano-driven ballad sounds more like Catatonia’s Cerys Matthews in reflective mode as Lahey reflects on the pangs of letting go of someone she cares about but knows is wrong for her. Album closer ‘I Want To Live With You’ is a pretty, very romantic, loved up guitar ballad devoted to the object of her desire. It’s clear Lahey’s much more preoccupied with love and relationships on album No. 2, all loved up from her new relationship and documenting the apparently bittersweet breakup of the last one. Which makes for an interesting listen in al its varied styles and themes.