Lights – PEP (Album)

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Lights brings her light to the post-pandemic darkness with her new album, PEP.

Five years after the release of her comic-book-based album Skin & Earth, Canadian alt-pop artist Lights returns with her fifth studio album, PEP. The 13-song album is also accompanied by another comic book instalment, entitled The Clinic, again written and illustrated entirely by the singer.

Lights’ multifaceted talents as visual artist, writer and musician can all be seen to converge and bleed into the PEP project, which has all the indie-pop appeal of Skin & Earth with a new strength and maturity. Lights seems to have recognised this herself; speaking about the album, she said, “I’ve never understood the task more than I did when I was making this record. My vision feels complete, and every single component comes from this very intense evolution I’ve experienced in my personal life over the last few years.”

It’s an album full of unapologetic anthems in all sorts of colours, from airy-vocaled electropop (Beside Myself, Rent, Grip) to the swaggering self-confidence of Salt and Vinegar, Jaws and Sparky. It’s an ode to “love, magic, feminism” (Prodigal Daughter), and the self. “The idea behind PEP is if you’re going to brand yourself, then brand yourself to happiness,” Lights has explained.

Lights therefore makes it clear that she’s going to dance to the beat of her own drum (“Everybody talkin’, I can’t hear what they said / Yeah, I’m too busy dancing to the drum in my head,” she sings on the chorus of In My Head). Given that it has Twenty One Pilots’ Josh Dun lending his talents to the track, it’s an impressive drum score to be dancing to.

Money In The Bag brings in dramatic Western-style guitar and piercing high notes from guest artist Kiesza, while Real Thing featuring producer-singer Elohim recalls the simpler times of early-2010s pop with its summery steel pan percussion, shimmering synths and video-gamey sound effects. Discussing the track’s conception, Lights said, “We [herself and Elohim] had sake and sushi and sang and played weird instruments and laughed and all was right in the world.”

The impression that all is right in the world—or at least, that it will be—comes across no matter which track on PEP you’re listening to. The album might lose some of its intensity towards the end, but it never loses its hope; as Lights sings on Okay Okay, “I always say I’m the happiest sad girl you’ll ever meet”. From an artist who has received stacks of letters from fans talking about how they’ve depended on her music to get through their toughest times, it’s an all-important album at an all-important time in the world—and it’s sure to put at least a little PEP in your step.

Tracklist:

01 – Beside Myself
02 – In My Head (feat. Josh Dun)
03 – Prodigal Daughter
04 – Salt and Vinegar
05 – Money In the Bag (feat. Kiesza)
06 – Jaws
07 – Rent
08 – Sparky
09 – Real Thing (feat. Elohim)
10 – Easy Money
11 – Okay Okay
12 – Voices Carry
13 – Grip

OVERALL RATING: 4 stars

LIGHTS & MYTH – Dead End (EP)

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Canadian singer-songwriter Lights announced her upcoming dance-remix album “Dead End” will be released on August 7, 2020.

From the album, she has dropped album title track, in which she teamed up with Los Angeles-based producer MYTH.

The accompanying music video was directed by her husband Beau Bokan. “I wanted to put a new twist on my music that would make more sense to that kind of show. I thought, man, I’ve been making acoustic versions of my records for years, I might as well make dance versions too,” Lights said. “Reworking a handful of the songs with my friend MYTH into a fitting live set – like a remixed performance – with live vocals and guitar.”

“This led us to cracking open some new demos I had been working on and fitting them into this release as well,” she stated.

Tracklist:

1.“Dead End”
2.“Outdoor Sports”
3.“Bats**t”
4.“We Were Here [Remix]”
5.“Fight Club [Remix]”
6.“Up We Go [Remix]”
7.“Almost Had Me [Remix]”
8.“Savage [Remix]”

OVERALL RATING

4 stars

Lights – Skin&Earth Acoustic (Album)

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Lights has signed to Fueled by Ramen. Lights will kick off her new era with a 10-track unplugged album, Skin&Earth Acoustic, a collection of seven stripped-down takes on her most beloved songs and three newly-recorded tracks. Due out on July 12, the singer/songwriter/illustrator recorded, produced and mixed the album herself, and collaborated with husband Beau Bokan of Blessthefall on the visuals for the project.

Tracklist:

1.”Skydiving (Cliff Recording)”

2.”Until the Light (Truck Cab Recording)”

3.”Savage (Rain Recording)”

4.”New Fears (Bedroom Recording)”

5.”We Were Here (Tunnel Recording)”

6.”Kicks (River Recording)”

7.”Almost Had Me (Desert Recording)”

8.”Tabs”

9.”Lost Girls”‘

10.”Down Forever”

OVERALL RATING

4 stars

Lights – Scorpion Side B (Covers) (Album)

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Canadian pop singer-songwriter LIGHTS decided to record an acoustic cover of Drake’s entire Scorpion Side B!  The cover album is the first of its kind for the artist, and has reached over 500,000 streams on various platforms.

The artist performed, recorded, produced and engineered the acoustic cover album in just two-weeks after the original album, which has received somewhat mixed reviews from critics and Drake fans. On Metacritic, the project has received a score of 67, with an average user score of 4.2 for the project.

Tracklist:

01. Peak
02. Summer Games
03. Jaded
04. Nice For What
05. Finesse
06. Ratchet Happy Birthday
07. That’s How You Feel
08. Blue Tint
09. In My Feelings
10. Don’t Matter To Me
11. After Dark
12. Final Fantasy
13. 14-Mar

OVERALL RATING

4 stars

Lights – Skin&Earth (Album)

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Concept albums are nothing new, but it’s the lengths to which Lights takes her fourth album Skin & Earth that sets it apart. After introducing herself as the comic book alter-ego Captain Lights in 2008, the electro-pop artist (real name: Valerie Poxleitner) further colors outside the lines by pairing her next LP, due this fall, with a comic book series from Dynamite Entertainment that brings the music’s narrative to life. “I’ve always found a way to connect comics and music, but never so directly,” she says.

Courtesy of LIGHTS

The Issue One cover of Lights’ upcoming Skin & Earth comic series, which connects to her album of the same name.

Three years in the making and inspired by female heroines like Wonder Woman, the project — written pre-President Donald Trump but “definitely with some commentary on this part of the world,” she says — tells the story of a girl named En in search of hope in a post-apocalyptic world. In the leadup to the album, Lights will release monthly comic book issues starting in July alongside corresponding songs. “As of now there are only six issues, and that completes the record,” she says. “But I don’t think it’ll end there. I’m not just letting it go.”

Courtesy of LIGHTS

Two pages of Issue One of Lights’ upcoming Skin & Earth comic series.

Tracklist:

 1. Intro
2. Skydiving
3. Until the Light
4. Savage
5. New Fears
6. Morphine
7. We Were Here
8. Kicks
9. Giants
10. Moonshine
11. Interlude
12. Magnetic Field
13. Fight Club
14. Almost Had Me

OVERALL RATING

4½ stars

Lights – Midnight Machines (Album)

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“Midnight Machines” is an acoustic EP by Canadian synthpop singer-songwriter Lights. It’s expected to be released on April 8th.

This is a collection of acoustic versions of songs from her latest album “Little Machines”, released in 2014. The first single “Meteorites“, was released on March 4th.

Tracklist:

1. Up We Go

2. Same Sea

3. Follow You Down

4. Meteorites

5. Don’t Go Home Without Me

6. Running With The Boys

7. Head Cold

8. Muscle Memory

OVERALL RATING

4 stars

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