Originally published September 11, 2019 on radiofodder.com
When I first saw that LANY was bringing their World Tour to Margaret Court Arena on July 19, I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted to buy tickets.
Back in 2015, ‘ILYSB’ was my anthem. In 2016, I had ‘pink skies’ on repeat – in fact I had regular fever dreams involving Paul Klein crooning while he stared into my eyes (of course, in my fantasy I was front row), and he presented me with a bouquet of flowers during the encore.
But it’s not 2016 anymore. I really loved LANY, but I closed the door on angsty undergrad Monique a good two years ago and now there are new 16-year-old Paul Klien-obsessed teens in the world.
Was I really prepared to be moshing amongst a sea of children, covered in the superfluid of teens—a mix of sweat, tears and cheap vodka smuggled into the area in yoghurt pouches?
Yes, yes I was.
My housemate and I had it all planned out: Be ready by 5pm, arrive at the venue by 5:45pm, leaving us an hour and 15 minutes to line up and spend our life savings on merch.
Well, one broken water heater and an outfit meltdown later, we were jogging towards Margaret Court Arena, vodka-spiked 7/11 Slurpees in hand. It was 6:45pm, and we knew full well that the doors opened in less than 15 minutes. Shit….the line was long.
Now I am usually a very polite person, and we did start to drag our deflated souls towards the back of the queue, but when we saw the line starting to jerk forward and naive security guards holding back teens, we kinda both knew what was about to happen.
Suddenly hundreds of teen girls were running. I’m not talking a slow jog or power walk. I’m talking a ‘100 metre sprint’-style running towards the ticket gates. They were all vying for my front-and-centre fantasy position, which would ensure at least 10 seconds of crooning Paul Klein.
And guess what, ya girl was one of them.
We squeezed forward to the front of the queue and made it through the gates. Once inside, we made the controversial decision to pee before joining the mosh – which, retrospectively, was very smart – and still ended up getting pretty damn close to the stage considering our late arrival.
Getting a prime spot in the mosh was one thing. Maintaining it was a whole other story.
The first step to maintaining your spot in a mosh is to make friends with the people around you. That way they can help protect you and will feel hella guilty if they try and push in front of you. We even managed to help reunite one of our new friends with her girlfriend who had gotten lost in the mosh, further guaranteeing our permanent place in the crowd.
Then it was time for the opening act, Los Leo, to take the stage. Los Leo had a super chill vibe and a slow, melodic voice that would melt even the tiniest of hearts. But he did sound EXACTLY like LANY, and my heart can only take so much teen angst in one day. The rest of the crowd was thoroughly enjoying the music though – so my grandma-soul doesn’t even matter anyway.
Truthfully: my back was already sore, I needed to pee AGAIN and I was just getting very impatient. We then had to wait for LANY for an excruciating 45 minutes, and let me tell you, I was counting down minute by minute.
But you don’t really care about that so let’s skip forward to the juicy bit (spoiler: no, I did not make out with Paul but if you would like to pretend with me that I in fact did, feel free to consider this a “choose your own adventure” review and click out now).
Suddenly, the screen behind the stage lit up and I found myself screaming for the entire duration of the trendy VSCO-style two minute countdown to the start of the 2019 LANY World Tour.
The band started the night with ‘Thick and Thin’, which is coincidentally the first song on their 2019 album Malibu Nights. We love a good parallel.
Many other Malibu Nights bangers made the setlist—including ‘Taking Me Back’, ‘If You See Her’, ‘I Don’t Wanna Love You Anymore’ and ‘Run’.
They also played a bunch of tracks from their 2017 album LANY – including ‘Good Girls’, ‘Super Far’ and ‘Hericane’ – and even threw it way back and played ‘yeah, babe, no way’ and ‘pink skies’ from kinda, as well as ‘Made In Hollywood’ from Make Out.
The concert itself was super interactive. Multiple times throughout the night Paul came down off the stage and into the crowd, sending ‘moshers’ into a frenzy, with every girl wanting to get as close as they could to his sweaty body.
The ‘aesthetics’ added to the concert vibe, with cool neon lights and edgy patterns turning the arena into a big ol’ mood. That combined with the pounding bass and Paul’s ‘cool boi’ demeanor made the atmosphere feel immersive and supportive.
During ‘Malibu Nights’ and ‘The Breakup’ – two of their most gut-wrenching songs – I lost my shit and was virtually in a pool of tears on the floor.
The night ended with the track that originally made me love LANY – ‘ILYSB’ – and girls throwing roses they had clutched throughout the night onto the stage. I wasn’t front and centre like in my fantasy, but I definitely felt a connection with Paul and LANY.
10/10 would recommend to a friend (or myself the next time LANY come to Melbourne).
