LANY

One Liner:  80's pop redux balladry like The 1975, but more 80's

Wikipedia Genre:  Indie pop, synth pop, dream pop
Home: LA

Poster Position: 7

Both Weekends.

Thoughts: Their name stands for Los Angeles New York and I already hate them.  Wikipedia quotes this: "We knew we wanted a four-letter word because of design and aesthetic purposes, but as you can imagine, all the four-letter words in the entire world are taken. We moved to acronyms and for a while we thought we would be TTYL, but then we decided we didn’t want to be 13 for the rest of our lives. I eventually thought of the span across the country from L.A. to New York, and at first I was thinking it would be L-A-N-Y, but people kept getting confused on how to pronounce it when I told them, saying things like 'L-A-and-Y?' So then we’re like forget it—let's call ourselves LANY, pronounced Lay-Nee."  So, there you go, Lay-Nee.

The tunes themselves are very slick 80's synth pop stuff with soft falsetto harmonies layered over throwback jams and soft-rock, sleepy guitar licks.  "Let Me Know" and "I Don't Wanna Love You Anymore" make me want to take a nap.  Feels like something I would have heard on the Grand Theft Auto Vice City soundtrack 20 years ago, trying to act like a throwback song in 2001.  Their most recent album is 2018's Malibu Nights (even their album names sound like cheesy 80's prom themes re-used in an ironic way in a 90's sitcom).  The top song from that album is "Thru These Tears," with a whopping 102.4 million streams.

This one at least feels a slight bit more active than the rest of the album.  It still feels like 80's throwback synth pop the whole time, but at least it trades out the tired guitar splashes in favor of a more driving synth run.  It's still like a new Snow Patrol that is trying to make the music Snow Patrol would have made if Snow Patrol was Snow Patrol in 1987 instead of 2003.

Instead of going with any of the other new tracks, let's go back in the past and see if any of those are any better.  Oh, look, their 2017 debut album, LANY, has a track with even more streams - "Super Far" has 170.9 million - so I'm sure it is going to be a great track!

Nope.  That is 38% less of an 80's redux, but instead it is more like a 90's boy band redux instead.  Even has the group dance moves thing in the video!  But that synth beat in the background of most of the track is definitely still thirsty for the 80's.

I absolutely do not want to witness this live.