K Flay brought her Mono: I’m Making Friends With The Silence Tour through Phoenix this week, bringing its month-plus long trek a stop closer towards its finale in LA this coming weekend. You’d never know she’d been on stage nearly nightly since the end of February though, from the energy and chaos she brought to the Van Buren. Supporting her most recent EP release from this past November, I’m Making Friends With The Silence, this tour served to bring new variations of tracks from her 2023 album, Mono. After touring Mono for the first half of 2024, K Flay was diagnosed with sudden hearing loss in one of her ears. This sensory change gave K Flay cause to reflect on life as a musician living in a half silent world, one where loud music left her head ringing. Ultimately, this brought her into the studio to reinterpret her favorite tracks from Mono as quieter, more controlled versions. These quiet variations (“Bar Soap”, “Punisher”, “Chaos is Love,” and “Are You Serious?”) were interspersed throughout her nearly 2 hour set, bringing the audience along on a sonic and visual rollercoaster ride.
Opening the night with the aforementioned quiet version of “Bar Soap” while behind a projection screen looking as if she was trapped within a neon light box, K Flay eventually broke free from the projected confinement and burst into “Raw Raw” off of Mono. Between bouncing from corner to corner of the stage, K Flay demonstrated her talents as a multi-instrumentalist, switching between a beat machine, microphone, and guitar as she traversed a set as varied as her talents. Other stand out tracks from the night include an incredible cover of The Beatles “I Am The Walrus”, 2020’s quarantine single “Zen/FML” , “Raw Raw” off of Mono, and massive crowd favorites “Blood in the Cut” & “High Enough” from 2017’s Every Where Is Some Where. K Flay is finishing her tour this weekend with dates in San Diego and LA.
