"Walk Away"- LANY

Listening through enigmatic LA-artist LANY's initial single it becomes easy to use the word "simplistic" as a descriptor. Musically "Walk Away"'s DNA is extremely mappable: late-80s R&B that could wind up on a Ready for the World album. A lone synthesizer continuously ripples like a wave in Japan's Ocean Dome Pool. Artificial finger snaps are metronomic in their precision. LANY's voice never soars or plummets as he confesses "I'm too good at leaving love," one of the song's few delivered lines. Even the way LANY ends the effort with a cut-off "I don't wanna be" harkens back to an 80s delivery method.

But filing "Walk Away" as 80s R&B-revivalism would dangerously reductionist. The electronic murmurs floating to the song's surface would be far too eccentric for standard 80s R&B fair. Each bleep recalls a spaceship scanning the surface of the Moon looking for signs of life. Reflecting on every alien communique, LANY's pregnant pauses in-between lines become almost skin-crawling. However, they don't have the feel of dramatism. Those abrupt stops seem to be done out of necessity rather than showmanship. And when you consider what LANY's saying, that his hidden talent is hastily letting love go, the pauses become necessary for the listener as well. And in those moments of vocal silence, you realize what LANY's constructed stands outside of time and place.



You can find LANY's debut track "Walk Away" and "Hot Lights" now through Soundcloud and download them on iTunes. Credit to Disco Naïveté for posting an early review of this track.