Having a packed-out room absolutely enamoured with you on a rainy Monday night is no easy feat. Yet dream pop trio LANY had the entire thousand-strong audience wrapped around their finger, taking them on a journey of love and heartbreak like no other.

Support band lovelytheband encouraged the crowd to “pretend tonight is Friday” and though they were inescapably on the cringey side of their sunshine-infused pop genre, they did inevitably set the tone for an energetic and fundamentally fun night – by the time their set had finished and they had stopped bounding around stage, it did admittedly feel a little bit like Friday.

LANY took to the stage amidst a shower of roses and screams. That sense of pure adoration from long-time fans was tangible throughout their set, and felt heartwarmingly mutual – frontman Paul Klein reiterated his gratitude constantly, and the crowd hung onto his every word. Racing through a set peppered with old favourites like ‘yea, babe, no way’ and songs from their latest album, Malibu Nights, there was no song that the crowd did not know every word to, something which visibly overwhelmed Klein – this was quite clearly a room full of people to whom LANY’s music was incredibly important. 

Their set was intrinsically defined by passion – from the more upbeat message to an ex, ‘If You See Her’ and the raw, heart-broken ballad ‘Hericane’, there was a profound sense of passion in every second they played. It was emotional and intimate in a way that seemed impossible to a room with so many people in. There was, however, a bizarre sense of community to the crowd; Klein addressed the room as a “family” and it was fitting. LANY have a talent for acutely finding the distinction between the intensely personal and the universally relatable and there is something in that philosophy which brought the room together; these were songs to hug your best friends to, to cry over an old relationship to, to dance about in pure unadulterated joy to, and there was something deeply magical about the experience. 

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