LANY Tickets

Paul Klein (lead-singer & songwriter) had just finished a workout at his local gym last summer when his and LANY’s world was (for a brief moment, quite literally) flipped upside down. Only a couple miles from where he lives in Hollywood, he hopped on his vespa scooter to head home and a minute later was crossing an intersection when a car appeared from nowhere.

The LA-based duo (comprised of Klein and his bandmate/ best friend Jake Goss) were less than two weeks away from the Australian leg of their “a beautiful blur” world tour when the accident happened. Having already finished the European, North American and Latin American legs, the band were spending the first weeks of summer at home, recharging before getting back on the road. Nobody could’ve imagined how quickly everything would change. What is perhaps more conceivable is how catalyzing a moments like this would be for Klein, both personally and creatively. Thematically and visually “Soft” exists in tension — an intentional contrast of the hard and soft. Tangible, literal, physical hardness juxtaposed with metaphorical, relational (and, at times too, physical) softness.

Sonically, the album explores these same tensions — much of the softness and vulnerability of lyric that has defined LANY’s acclaimed career, now with a harder, braver edge to the production. Where familiar listeners might’ve expected to encounter some more predictable or safer choices, LANY has seriously matured and evolved. The soft piano ballads west-coast-indie guitars and bedroom pop sonics that LANY helped create and popularize aren’t entirely abandoned, but their sound and Klein’s writing has expanded. The list of brave choices on “Soft” begins with Klein’s willingness to start writing mere weeks after waking up in the ambulance. It continues with the band’s decision to produce the album entirely with Tommy King, who has a more abstract, indie production background / history (Bon Iver, Dijon, Vampire Weekend, Haim) and ends with a sonic-identity that is simultaneously incredibly fresh and peculiarly familiar (another dichotomy that defines the record and has come to define the band).