PAUL KLEIN of LANY: Being Your Own Sound in the Digital Age of Music
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Named as one of the “10 Artists you need to know” in 2016 by none other than Rolling Stone, LANY (pronounced Lay-nee) are heading to Auckland later this month for an all-ages show at The Powerstation.
Formed in 2014, the dipped in synth electro-pop three piece have been capturing hearts and minds wherever they go with their melodic declarations of love and longing. Now with the release of their self-titled debut album last month, LANY have become a permanent fixture in the current club scene.
Lead vocalist Paul Klein recently took a break from their heavy touring schedule to discuss all things music:
LANY comprises of yourself plus Jake Goss on drums and Les Priest on keyboards, for those readers who aren’t familiar with your story – how did you guys meet?
“At that time – like Nashville is still a small city – but 4 years ago or so it was really, really small and everyone there does music; you kinda hear names ‘Oh that’s the guy, oh that’s the best drummer, that’s the best guitar player’ you know so like Jake’s was always one of those names coveted, appreciated and well respected.
And then Les was living in a house with Jake and three other guys, so I was just at a jam and my friend Kyle was like ‘Oh hey this is Jake Goss’ and I was like ‘Oh hey Jake nice to meet you whatever’ and we just became boys. I like ran into him a few more times and got his number and we just started hanging out; we would go to the house and watch sport you know and do whatever and yeah that’s how we met”
I believe at the time you guys met, you already had a solo career and Goss and Priest were performing under the name WRLDS – then after you got together you created LANY, threw some tracks up on Soundcloud and watched them blow up before you had even identified yourselves in public! Did you find that really strange?
“I guess like, everything was a surprise. You know we weren’t purposely trying to hide ourselves, we just didn’t think anybody gave a shit! We put ourselves on Soundcloud and our Lany profile had zero followers and our Twitter had like four followers; they were me, Jake, Les and one other guy. I found this photo of a few American basketball players and I slapped Lany over the top of it and that’s what it [our profile] was.
We just didn’t really care; but then when the interest started growing, somebody kinda like had to tell us, ‘Hey we don’t know what you guys look like’, and we were like ‘Oh you’re right we don’t have a band photo’. Then we started to think: Wait, should we not, should we never do band photos? You know it was like this thing! Our mystery was a total accident, it’s really fascinating you know because now that people know what we look like I feel like … I don’t know, it’s just really fascinating! They’ll say stuff about our music now and maybe they’ll like criticize it but it’s the same kinda stuff that we were putting out in the beginning [when] there was no face to the name, but people didn’t criticize it then so yeah”
Can you tell us about the album that you have just recently released?
“We wrote and recorded it over the span of a few months; last year we played 117 shows, this year we will play over 130, so we are always working, always touring, always on the road. So for those 15months, the second you got off tour, everything, all of our time was dedicated to writing and recording.
It was of utmost importance to us that our debut album was not just a culmination of our most popular songs from our previous EP’s surrounded by a few new songs. We just think that that is cheap. We know what our fans want and that’s new material; so like on a 16 track debut album the only song previously released from it is ‘ILYSB’, and that’s for radio purposes really just to be transparent with you. But we were like pretty serious about not including other songs that were previously released”
What would you say is your personal favourite off the album?
“I have two, ‘13’ and ‘Super Far’. With ‘13’ it’s really simple, it’s a two guitars track, a drum, like a beat machine and my vocals, but it makes me feel so good and that’s all I really judge anything by. Our music, anyone’s music, like how does it make me feel? Does it make me feel anything? And that song just says something special to me and I think the melody, my delivery on it is really good. ‘Super Far’ I think is going to be really massive, I think it has really wide appeal similar to ‘ILYSB’”.
‘WHERE THE HELL ARE MY FRIENDS’ was your first music video that you released late last year, what was the inspiration behind it?
“I wanted to try and project being around people but feeling completely isolated and disconnected; so I worked with the director on how we could make that come across. He settled on people are alive, moving and interactive under this colour but under that colour (for me) I am completely stagnant. So this whole time I’m trying to engage with the people around me but there’s nothing I can do about it. I had a great time, we shot it in one day in like the west side of London and that was a cool experience. Technically that wasn’t our first music video, the ‘ILYSB’ video was actually already shot and we were just holding it, we had put it in the vault for the time being”
Who would you say are your biggest influences, either past or present?
“John Mayer, Coldplay and Frank Ocean”
And across the board for the group?
“Across the board, those are my biggest, but the ones we all have in common are like, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Daft Punk, Frank Ocean, John Mayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Audioslave and The Cars; all that 80’s pop music you know?”
LANY have performed at several festivals – any particular lessons you have taken away from that experience?
“Yeah of course, I mean I could get into like the logistical side of things; in music and touring it’s called ‘Festival Style’ and you know that you’re not going to get a soundcheck from front of house, their just going to throw all your gear up, maybe get like your monitors dialed in; you just expect a very minimal amount of set up and soundcheck time.
You gotta know how to cater your set to your festival audience; the way that I’ve approached it is assuming that nobody is there for us, you know like I have to be aware of the size of our band, the size of our reach. We are still a pretty new band, working hard and growing really quick, but there are plenty of people that have no idea that we exist! So I just go ahead and assume that nobody knows who we are and we’ve got one chance to just fucking kill em. You pick the more up tempo ones [songs] the ones that have been proven to kind of resonate with people and you stay away from too many ballads because you don’t want people to become uninterested and go get a beer.
And then there’s something just really simple that I’ve noticed, like if you ever play festivals make sure that your band name is hanging up on the biggest banner possible because that’s what people are going to remember you by! ‘Oh man, I saw this amazing band on the side stage and I cannot fucking remember their name’; and they are going through the camera roll on their phone like ‘I have these photos, but there’s no band name on there’.
It’s just little stuff like that, being smart and knowing your audience. I’d much prefer to do our own headline tour obviously, but festivals are fun because you get to be around the people that you respect in music, like 21 Pilots, those are my boys so to see them and stuff, that’s what’s fun about festivals … that and catering … but not even that” (laughs)
Yes Lany is still quite new; do you believe that the digital age of music has now made it easier to be discovered or that there is now an over saturation of music?
“Yeah, it’s kinda a catch 22. There is a lot of music out there and it is pretty over saturated; there is a lot of bad music out there too. There’s a lot of artists right now even in the commercial radio space, I mean there’s about two thousand artists making the same song every week. I love Spotify to death but ‘New Music Friday’ is almost a genre now and it’s all the same song, it’s just DJ music with a vocal on top cause that’s pretty much the easiest music to make you know? I am so thankful for the internet and streaming because we’re a product of it, I wouldn’t be on the phone with you right now without it, like we have no business being in New Zealand, I mean zero, it’s so far from home to us”
So you must be pretty excited to be coming here then?
“Yeah, we’re excited to come; we cannot wait, it’s so important to us to be there! I do think that good music still shines and the most important thing that you can have right now is your own sound. Thank god that we don’t sound like anybody and nobody sounds like us and I think that is the most viable thing you can have as an artist”
LANY have a one off show at Auckland’s Powerstation on Wednesday 26th July. You can find out more info on the show here, and tickets are still available from AAA Ticketing (But get in quick as they’re nearly sold out)!