For a brief moment K.FLAY didn’t know if she would ever perform onstage again. Following her diagnosis of Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss, she was in a state of unknown. As she explained in our 2023 interview, it was like she was on a cliffhanger of her own life. But the plot twist is she made it through the darkness and unknown, and made an album that articulately described that rebirth. “MONO” is a record that has brought her back to the stage, and back to fans, and she’s now on the road performing that album live. 

K.FLAY (aka Kristine Flaherty) and I are sitting in a booth backstage at her Sydney headline show. She kicked off the Australian run of shows the night before in Melbourne, and is feeling genuinely excited about the energy that is shining through on these shows. Nerves are something that always present themself to her before a show, and when asked about the first show back after her diagnosis, she describes it as a moment of your mind and body having to rise to the occasion. “To go from kind of zero to 60, you don’t just sort of spring up and do it, there is a process of ramping up. I think I’ve gotten consistently better as a performer, so I need more and more energy. I need that ramp to be really long and steep. So I’ll say that I was nervous, but I think it felt very relieving too. It felt like stepping into your comfortable pair of jeans, the ones that don’t cinch me at the waist.” she explains. 

Finding her brain adapting to performing again quite quickly, she started to work out what worked best for her, and started to build out her in-ear rig. “I get a stereo feed to my one ear, which to me now is normal. So sonically the show is pretty much the same. I have a blank in my right ear because I like to sort of feel balanced. But yeah, it kind of feels normal. Fucked up, but normal”. From there she just focused on bringing the world of “MONO” together with her previous record and finding the right balance of old and new.

The show is designed to leave the audience with a sense of invigoration. There’s a lot of different goals you can have as a performer, and a lot of different kinds of shows you can go to. And for K.FLAY the process of making “MONO” was a process of invigoration and was energising, and in turn that’s how she wants the show to feel. “Sometimes you go to a show and you’re actually quite calm and chill after. I don’t want people to be agitated by my show, but I do want them to feel motivated, inspired, energized”. 

Five albums into her career, there is a lot of music for her to sort through whilst building a setlist, and she admits that this tour was particularly hard to figure out the moments that make the cut. “I’ve talked to friends who are on their seventh records, and I think you have to be okay with certain things just being in that moment. So there is kind of a kill your darlings component of creating the setlist. There are songs I love to play like “Not In California”, but there’s no fucking space for it on the setlist at the moment. It doesn’t do anything different in the live space than a song like “Weirdo” does, which is a newer song”. But for Australia in particular she was aware she didn’t tour “Inside Voices/Outside Voices” here, and wanted to make sure she included moments like “TGIF” and “Weirdo” into the set. But the show is also heralded by a lot of the “MONO” songs, and one in particular that immediately feels like a K.FLAY classic is “Spaghetti” which she says kind of surprised her. Another one is “Punisher” which is towards the end of the set and feels like a powerful and intense moment. But she reflects on the fact that not all of them have been easy additions. ““Carsick” has taken a minute. We actually brought it a step and a half step down in key. I do that sometimes because night after night, if you’re belting at a high your voice may become very tired. So that kind of unlocked a lot for us. “Irish Goodbye” also took a minute to figure out how to make that feel heavy without blasting people too much as that song has a lot of guitars and a lot going on”. But she even admits that some of her older songs like “Can’t Sleep” are still hard to figure out live. “I kind of still haven’t, which is crazy because it’s almost ten years old. We’re playing a version of it tonight, but it always feels like it’s not hitting”. But a current old favourite of hers is “Blood In The Cut” which she’s freshened up with a mash up of Rage Against The Machine’s “Bulls On Parade”, and plays bass during. 

I first discovered K.FLAY in 2015 and was immediately drawn to her lyrical honesty along with her DIY soundscape that was so intoxicating to listen to. I then saw her live for the first time in 2017 at Woolly Mammoth in Brisbane and then again at Oxford Art Factory, and was blown away with her strength as a live performer. And over the years have seen the growth in the show from her at Splendour In The Grass and other headline shows. The live show has always been something she has in-particularly put a focus on, and she’s in-turn worked the circuits to now get to where she is. 

Her first tour was in 2010 on a four band bill college tour headlined by Passion Pit. She learnt that as an opening act you have to be flexible no matter what the situation is, and show the utmost respect even when someone might be acting like a dick to you. “I was finishing my last song and I was going maybe 20 seconds over my 25 minute time. And at this time in my career I was performing alone on stage. It’s just me, a fucking guitar, and a desk. Nothing to strike from the stage. And they shut me off from the PA. And the stage manager was a fucking asshole and took me aside and was like “this is my fucking stage. If you ever go over time again, we’ll kick you off the tour”. I was alone, and had no tour manager. So that was not a fun experience.”

Later on she also found herself opening for bands like Imagine Dragons on arena tours where she learnt you have to create your own energy and be confident in that no matter how the crowd might be reacting. “Just because someone is maybe more still, it doesn’t mean they’re not loving the show, and it doesn’t mean they’re not really engaged. I can’t read people’s minds, and that’s okay. So I just need to have the confidence to know that I’m putting the best show on that I can.” 

A pivotal tour for her was the “Every Where Is Somewhere Tour” in 2017, where she had a big upgrade in the live production, was playing bigger rooms, and had a record that was resonating globally. But it was an album that also stemmed from a really dark place, and through the live show she was able to bring it into a really cathartic and celebratory place. “Performing for me feels very energizing and like light in color. Whereas making that record and being in the thick of that can feel a little angstier, and I’m more in my feelings. But then I’m past my feelings and they’re long gone. “You Felt Right” was a moment from that album tour which was hard, and we’ve actually never played it again”. 

“The Solutions Tour” then saw her upgrading venues again and stepping up her production game with a record that was sonically and aesthetically a lot brighter. “For “Solutions”, it was really about creating something that felt fun, playful and also incorporated the colours of the record. “Everywhere, Somewhere” was like me in all black, I was just angry. And “Solutions” was this other side of things. It had a lot of optimism baked in, and I think we reflected that spirit in the live show. We were all in white which is really nice because when light is shown on you as you absorb it and you are that colour”. Another aspect she really enjoyed about that tour was the logistics and working with her production manager to ask questions like “How do we take this thing? How do we break it down? What’s it made out of? What’s light enough to carry?”.  

While that tour was a big moment in her career, it also came with some hard lessons, which she notes the European leg as one of the hardest tours she’s been on emotionally. “I was going through a breakup. And I also fell and broke my fucking nose. I was just kind of hurt  physically and emotionally. And that was also once I had mainly quit drinking. So I kind of had no easy way out, and there was no escape. I was also far from home, which can be difficult”. 

But it’s a tour that also showed her resilience, and she laughs as she explains how the New York show was her most rewarding show to date. “I had gotten food poisoning the night before and I was so sick and throwing up all day. I was staying at my brother’s house, and had eaten nothing. I was also having relationship problems preceding this breakup. It got to show time and I was like “it’s go time. I gotta fucking go”. There’s a famous game from The Chicago Bulls  where Michael Jordan had the flu, and they won, and he passes out at the end because he’s totally depleted. After the show My brother was like, “that was your flu game, that was so insane.” That was probably the only time I felt physically like I might not be able to play a show. But it ended up being such a great show.”

K.FLAY is now well and truly in the “MONO Tour” era. She’s stripped everything back to be about the music with the lyrics hitting even harder as the crowd screams them along with her. It’s a show that brings elements from all of her previous tours, albums, and lessons together, and truly feels like a celebration of resilience.