By the time Chris Lanzon dropped New York, Falling Apart, he had already lived one whole music career in public and quietly started another. The Sydney artist came up on TV talent shows and teen pop with In Stereo, then walked away from that machine and rebuilt himself at home with a laptop, a guitar and a steadily growing online crowd. His solo run has unfolded across EPs Melancholy, Far From Perfect, Parkside and Angel Litany, leading to his debut album You’re Missing The Best Part hitting the ARIA albums chart in late 2025.
Where those early solo tracks leaned into hushed, bedroom-scale indie pop, New York, Falling Apart was a turning point. Written over Skype with LA musician Franco Reid during lockdown, it takes that diaristic writing and drapes it in a wider, more cinematic sound: woozy synth lines, a thicker drum pulse, guitar still sitting at the centre. He has talked about using the track as a chance to lean further into the electronic side of his listening diet while still keeping the indie bones intact.
Lyrically, the song plays in two frames at once. On the surface it is a love letter to New York, written by someone who only got a brief taste of the city and has been replaying it ever since. Underneath, it is about hanging onto a relationship that has already started to slip, using the idea of the city as a stand-in for everything you are scared to lose. That tension between romanticising a place and watching something fall apart in real time is what keeps the track from being just travel nostalgia.
Like most of Lanzon’s work from the Far From Perfect era, New York, Falling Apart came together in his bedroom studio, self-recorded and mixed, with mastering handled in New York to finish the loop. The EP it lives on charts life after the supposed happy ending of his first project, moving into doubt, self-interrogation and the awkward process of accepting that things rarely line up neatly.
Since then, Lanzon has kept scaling up without losing that home-built feel: more EPs, coverage from outlets like NME and Rolling Stone AU/NZ, a dedicated fan community across Discord, Substack and socials, and now a debut album that pushes his sound into bigger, live-ready territory. Through all of it, New York, Falling Apart still reads like an early thesis. It is the moment where the kid in his room starts writing for the skyline and, somehow, the songs keep feeling intimate anyway.
“New York, Falling Apart”. “New York, Falling Apart” considers how missing a person or a place are two sides of the same coin. “It’s a bit of a double meaning. I think on the surface level, it tells this story of kind of longing for this lost relationship, trying to hold onto something that’s just not really there anymore,” Chris says.
After a fleeting trip to the USA in 2019, Chris worked with LA-based songwriter Franco Reid over Skype to craft the track. Having fallen for New York City, now completely out of reach due to the pandemic, the two concepts merged.
“I was like, “What if we kind of switched the idea? Instead of singing it directly to a person or a thing, what if we’re singing it about the city itself?” It became this kind of weird vibe of me saying goodbye to a city that I can’t stay in anymore because of the pandemic and everything else,” Chris says.
The day after this recording, the Mood on the Roof team headed to Chris Lanzon’s first live gig since launching his music project. To a packed-out Factory Theatre Floor, Chris recalled how because of the pandemic, the only support he’s known for the project until that moment had come through a screen.
Over the course of the year, Chris worked away in his bedroom studio, releasing four singles and an EP, “Melancholy”, to plenty of online love. At the show, his excitement to see those profile pictures turn into people in front of him was palpable. In our conversation with Chris, his creativity, focus, and thoughtfulness immediately shine. Uniquely, his project is almost entirely (and impressively) executed by him alone. Opting out of management or label input, he’s in control, from the production and mixing of each track, to directing the music videos and designing the single artworks.
“In terms of creating my own stuff, it feels very intentional, a lot more like I can be super intentional with every single detail that goes into the song. And I love picking things apart and putting those layers together to make something that I can… to get the idea out of my head and into reality as best as I think it can be.”
Both at the show and online, Chris has teased the release of his next EP, aiming for release early 2021.
Throw Chris Lanzon a follow on his socials for updates!
MORE MOODS
Jack Gray Australia
Jack Gray performs Winter City like a late check-in from the road, all cold-air pop hooks and touring fatigue, the sound of an Australian kid looking around a foreign skyline and turning the homesick feeling into something you can sing along to.
Cody Jon Australia
Cody Jon runs through Becky’s Plan and dirty dancing with his usual grin-and-eye-roll energy, turning the roof into a teen movie scene: tight hooks, flirty asides, and a crowd locked into every chorus.
Phebe Starr Australia
Phebe Starr performs Air on the roof, stretching a breakup song into something closer to a late-night confession.
Kirsten Salty Australia
Salty performs Limbo in a slow-burn pop groove, circling the in-between of a relationship that never quite defines itself.