On Friday March 14th, K.Flay brought her genre-fusing style of alternative-rock and hip-hop to Paradise Rock Club for the Boston stop of her 2025 US tour. This tour highlighted her most recent LP, MONO, as well as her latest EP, I’m Making Friends With The Silence, which reimagines several tracks from MONO.
Opener Vienna Vienna delivered a fantastic set to a crowded venue, with his self-described brand of “glimmer rock” creating an electric jolt that connected quite well with the audience.
K.Flay appeared next, shrouded at first behind a sheer projector screen that served as the sole visual component of her relatively stripped back set (at least compared to previous tours). K.Flay began her lower key set with the Making Friends version of “Bar Soap”. Originally a louder, more raucous song on 2023’s MONO, the new, more stripped-down version pulls at a different kind of emotion. While K.Flay did not necessarily shy away from the raw energy more characteristic of her prior work, the setlist placed a notable emphasis on the softer renditions of her newest work.
The duality of MONO and I’m Making Friends With The Silence–present in fairly equal measure throughout the evening’s show–made for a sonic representation of K.Flay’s open struggle with the sudden and complete hearing loss that occurred in her right ear in 2022. As she explained during a mid-set break, MONO was a deliberately loud album, produced as a direct reaction in defiance of her hearing loss. However, she has since come to terms with the fact that loud music is often physically uncomfortable to bear in the time since that album’s release, which necessitated the softer sound of her latest EP.
That said, it would be inaccurate to describe the concert as a quiet affair. K.Flay delivered the energy with “Giver,” “Raw Raw,” “Bad Vibes,” and other familiar favorites like “Can’t Sleep that had the crowd moving with her as she danced and flailed around the stage. She concluded the evening with the climactic “Perfectly Alone,” and then left the stage with no encore. That choice of final song was a fitting distillation of the especially personal, inward-looking theme of self-acceptance of the tour. However, if the packed venue was any indication, K.Flay’s fans can be counted upon to show up for the rest of her journey.
Check out all of Greg’s photos from the show below.
