LANY at The Triffid

When those electronic first notes of Dumb Stuff began and the crowd began to roar, I knew I was in for a good show.

I saw LANY last year in Sydney but unfortunately was sick and had to leave halfway through the show so I missed all the hits. When I heard they were coming to Brisbane I knew I had to get tickets and they did not disappoint. I personally thought the crowd was more enthusiastic in Sydney but Brisbane held up pretty well. As magical as the Brisbane show was for the crowd, it seems like it was just as amazing for Paul:

 

 

brisbane i have no words for what just happened in that room. top 5 maybe top 1 show for me. insane intimate indescribable. the love you gave tonight will carry my soul for weeks thank you x

— paul klein (@pauljasonklein) March 23, 2018

 

If you haven’t heard of LANY, you probably don’t have Spotify or a Tumblr account. LANY is an American alternative-indie-pop band that formed in 2014 and has risen to popularity over the last few years. They released their first album last year, and it was incredibly popular amongst young adults. Just last week, one of their most recent singles Super Far hit 10,000,000 streams on Spotify which doesn’t include the 19,000,000+ views the video accumulated (to-date) on YouTube.

They avoided playing their most popular singles (Super Far, The Breakup, ILYSB) for the whole first half of the show, choosing to get the album tracks done first, interrupting it with one cover – Sign of the Times by Harry Styles which sounded like it was intermixed with another song I knew, possibly a Mayday Parade track towards the end but I can’t be certain.

It might not make me popular to say this, but the band could survive with Paul Jason Klein alone. In the live show, the other two band members are almost invisible to the majority of the audience as a result of lighting and staging choices. As a result of this it is Paul and the audience sharing an intimate emotional experience. He shares every emotion and feeling with you that he’s ever felt and encourages you to share your passion and feeling too. He almost throws it at you and you can’t help but give him everything you have in return.

With a lot of bands it’s about ego, but LANY is about connection. You might think that it’s about aesthetic and synth-pop if you look at their online presence, but being in their presence you realise they have a true love and passion for the music and performing live. The shared connection between LANY and their fans is through feelings, experiences, youth, and self-expression. Even if you haven’t experienced the exact situation or emotion that a song is about, you can still feel it and by the time the audience erupts into applause, it’s almost like you have experienced it.

Of course their first smash hit ILYSB closed out the evening. It was the first song I ever heard of theirs and it did not disappoint hearing it live for the first time.

The one and only support act, Glades, were a great warm-up. I’ve seen a lot of terrible support acts over the years but Glades were very professional and a great choice for LANY’s support act. Glades are the quintessential Spotify band, encompassing everything about current pop music. These kinds of bands produce consistent hits and are usually reliable, great performers, but lacking heart in the lyrics.

I wasn’t expecting to like them as I’m not usually into that kind of music, but they really surprised me and I enjoyed their performance a lot. The lighting was also fantastic during their set which is a luxury for a support act but it made all the difference and got the crowd hyped for LANY.

Follow LANY on facebook, instagram, twitter, and their official website which is a tumblr account.