All of a sudden, the lights went down. The crowd erupted. It was finally time. The second the three-piece from Los Angeles stepped out onto the stage of Concorde 2 Brighton, I knew that it was going to be one of the best nights of my life.
When I first discovered LANY back in 2015, I was certain that I had stumbled upon an undeniably special band. Their alternative rock, indie and electro style wasn’t something that I would have usually chosen to listen to, but I was captivated by it nonetheless. It was the best kind of different. I listened to their music non-stop; their notorious ‘ILYSB’ soon became my favorite song, and their debut album quickly grew to become my go-to soundtrack when it was released in June this year.
After getting tickets to see them back in June, I had spent months on end hyping myself up for a concert that I could only hope would be really special, and LANY certainly didn’t disappoint.
After the doors opened and the initial battle to get a good spot inside was over, an impressive opening set from the indie rock band Colouring started off the night, featuring a song called ‘Symmetry’ which I particularly enjoyed.
You could practically feel the tension spreading throughout the room once they had left the stage; the seconds seemed to tick by all too slowly; taunting us as we waited impatiently for the 80-minute set that was ahead of us.
At 9:00 pm, after what felt like an eternity, the atmosphere immediately shifted from tense to electric as Jake, Les and Paul finally took to the stage, starting their set off with ‘Dumb Stuff’. The trio had the entire crowd giving it their all from the get-go, all three of them looked like their music personified in their incredibly casual and chilled black jeans and baggy t-shirts.
I’d never experienced a livelier concert in my life. “We don’t stand still at LANY shows let’s go” Paul shouted halfway through the upbeat song ‘Purple Teeth’ as if we weren’t all already dancing harder than ever anyway. He was still met with enthusiastic cheers as we all reflected the energy he was giving off as he bounded and leapt across the stage.
We don’t stand still at LANY shows
The love and affection that we all felt for the trio were obvious; roses were thrown at them, smiles were plastered on everyone’s faces and “I love yous” were shouted at the stage every other second. Paul, in turn, spent the entire show singing directly to us and coming down onto the speakers to hold hands with us.
As the concert progressed, I felt myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed by everything that was taking place mere meters away from me. The three of them proved to me with every song that they were a band who deserved to be up there on that stage; they worked hard, they were passionate and they were exceptionally gifted musicians. Their live songs were as good as, if not better than, how they sounded on record.
After an hour of some of the most intense singing and dancing I had ever done in my life, the three-piece left the stage for there first time. In typical concert fashion, they were met by a bellowed chant of “ONE MORE SONG”. LANY, never ones to disappoint, decided to one-up us and gave us two instead, ending the show with a pair of their most popular songs; ‘Super Far’ and, the song I had been waiting all night for, ‘ILYSB’.
Finally hearing my favorite song live, up close and personal was the most surreal experience. I was completely lost in the moment as Paul’s mellifluous tones carried the words that I had grown to know all too well over the past two years.
As the show reached its close, I was left with a true sense of gratitude for those three boys who had perhaps just given me the best night of my life. My throat was raw and every muscle in my body ached but I didn’t mind. To me, that would just serve as a reminder of the utter magic that I had just been lucky enough to witness.
