Interview: NWMS chats with Lights about new music and tour
Alt-pop phenom Lights will be coming through Seattle on February 2nd, after opening her We Were Here tour with two sold out shows in Vancouver, BC. The Canadian singer/songwriter released her fourth album Skin&Earth last fall and recently chatted with us about the upcoming tour and music. Not only is she an incredible performer she is also an fascinating human who we had the pleasure talking to. Another exciting part is that the tour also features openers Chase Atlantic, who have been earning praise for their dark-pop since their breakthrough last year. This is our top choice for the week of the 29th in Seattle, make sure you head down to the Market to check these amazing artists out! Tickets and show information is available HERE.
NWMS: Tell me more about the tour starting on the 30th, is Vancouver your first show?
Lights: Yes it is, it’s starting in about a week and I’m actually very nervous but very excited. There was so much to work with on this tour because of the variety of the record and the dynamics of the new music I have had so much more of a vision for this tour than from any of the other ones. I’ve put so much time into the way the show will roll out, the feeling it should give you, interesting moments in the set, and for the first time incorporating visuals. It’s the most invested I’ve been in a tour but also the most nervous.
NWMS: What are you more nervous about for those first shows?
Lights: Coordinating the visuals is a crazy experience I’ve never had before and who knows how it will work but the first few shows will be the test. Should be alright by the time we reach Seattle and Portland. Whenever you try something new it’s a little strange. I’ve been doing this for more than ten years and now we’re incorporating new things so this is another thing to be excited and nervous about. It’s going to be great!
NWMS: As an artist and as a human you change so much and you have so many new ideas as you go through life, and I’m sure you want to incorporate that in your art.
Lights: It is funny because sometimes an artist is disliked when they change but that seems inevitable and I find it strange when an artist stays the same. As a fan though you feel happy with this, I think of other artists and how they’ve sort of had the same sound over the course of their career and I always wonder how they manage that and not want to try something different. I spend a lot of time thinking about who we are as people and how that manifests into our music and how far we let ourselves go into another direction. I’ve had no problem trying to push myself into other areas.
NWMS: I think that is why people have noticed you and expect that of you, you’re not afraid to show you’ve evolved. Artists sometimes are cursed when they change and they are cursed when they don’t, so it depends what you want.
Lights: Exactly, all you can hope for is to create something better than before, and the worst thing that can happen is you had one record that did better than all of them. I’m thankful in a sense that my first record was not my best, and I was able to move on and create something better.
NWMS: It’s true the curse of having a very popular first record is that fans expect you to remain the same.
Lights: True, you always have to live up to that record.
NWMS: But when you get more popular on your third or fourth they appreciate the evolution for some reason.
Light: This is true and it happens different for everyone.
NWMS: I wanted to ask about the collaborations on the latest record and how those came about.
Lights: Corin Ruddick (Purity Ring), Alan Wilkis (Big Data), and Stephen Kozmeniuk, were all producers on the album and Josh Dun (Twenty One Pilots), played drums on a few tracks. I usually do all of the songwriting on my own but I wanted to bring in other people to collaborate on this one and one of them was Fiona Bevan and it was cool to sit down with another woman and create something that was really meaningful. We did “Skydiving,” and “Morphine” together and she’s a total badass and it was cool to get another female influence on the record. I’ve been in the industry for a long time and I would say maybe 2% of my sessions have a girl in them so it was nice to have that. I’ve made it my goal to create some kind of tools that helps young women in an early age to understand the idea of say a producer role, or an engineer role, and be excited about it. Try to give them the tools they need to get into it because I think the way we’re raised is lacking getting women behind the scenes in music. They’re not raised to be interested in it, now that I have a daughter I notice all of the lack of marketing there is to young girls for tech related things.
NWMS: I’m glad to hear you say that and I completely agree with you that it is a hard industry to get into as a female.
Lights: I think a lot of the music related stuff is performance based at this point being in the front, being the singer, wardrobe, makeup, the show aspect of music. The behind the scenes is presented as non-interesting or even as an existing world, so many don’t know about it. I think of when I first cracked my first 8-track system at thirteen and had no idea how to do anything, I want that to change and move it in the right direction.
NWMS: How did you come up with the name Lights?
Lights: Well, flashback to 2006, I have a couple of songs and discovered my lo-fi electronic sound and I want to make a Myspace page. I had a couple under other pseudonyms as I was trying to find my sound and then as I had my profile page open and had to write my name in, and a nickname of mine was lights because of my last name Poxleitner, so I put that in and there it was. It’s sort of an easier version of my last name, that doesn’t sound like a disease.
NWMS: How did you get started with music?
Lights: I was a home schooled kid and we moved around a lot, and my dad was a musician, and music was the lesson I looked forward to once a week. Music became a passion in our hearts as it was the one constant thing in our lives through everything. I started with piano and when I was a little stronger I played guitar, and immediately wanted to write songs. I think I immediately recognized that this was a powerful tool, that I could do so much with it. I think that from the minute I learned how to play guitar I realized I wanted to make it my life.
NWMS: What are your hobbies outside of music that you feel strong about?
Lights: I really love comics and gaming and the element of fantastical entertainment that keeps you out of everyday logic. I think that’s so important to creativity so I’ve always been a fan of escaping through video games and comics. That has led to me doing art and paintings and has always been a dream of mine to be a creator. For this record I drew and wrote the entire thing and that was a dream come true, because of my passion for comics and art.
Tickets and show information for the February 2nd show in Seattle is available HERE.