I've never done a music review before so I thought I would take a crack at it while I'm in the middle of cleaning up my apartment. What better album to explore than one I've been revisiting quite a bit lately which is 'The Listening' by Canadian twenty-something artist Lights. And what better way to revisit an album than to have it blaring against my stucco walls while picking shit up.
First I'll talk about 'Ice' which is the first Lights song I ever heard and inevitably made me go out and buy the whole album. Admittedly it was the whole experience of the song along with the video (the first video; she has since come out with a newer flashier video) in which she essentially is texting on a phone and ends up fighting crazy cartoonish monsters to the backdrop of her synth-pop song Ice which is about her trying to apologize to a significant other to no avail because he has turned to ice and doesn't seem to want to accept her apology. On paper this does not sound like something I would ever enjoy listening too, which is good I didn't read a description of the song before I watched the video. Lights has an amazingly powerful and earnest voice and a delivery that is strangely both innocent yet also belies a sense of wisdom and experience. It is because of this that she's able to take the lyrics of a standard universally themed pop song and put it out there as this very personal plea to someone she cares about to work through the problem and not turn their back on her.
The whole album does an amazing job of showcasing her talents as a writer, singer, and instrumentalist. Her whole album is synth driven and synth, if done wrong, can sound incredibly cheesy and drown out any lyrical talent trying to shine through. Truly her strength is not only serving up amazingly straightforward yet interesting lyrical catches ("wish I was a little girl without the weight of the world") with her amazing voice but complementing so well with synth playing that gets to the heart and tone of what the song is about and knows how to support the emotional content without standing out front and center the whole time. She knows exactly when to push it out front and when to pull it back and her playing style is varied and diverse enough that each song makes your mind switch gears to prepare for a different ride instead of it all slurring together and losing your interest like other artists inevitably end up doing by making each song sound approximately the same.
Her lyrical style is by and large very straightforward, not trying to overpower you or wow you over with deeply philosophical metaphors but she knows just when to throw in a line that will perk your ears up and pull your attention in just a bit closer such as "seems somebody put out the moon, now the road is a minefield" , "you don't have to feel safe to feel unafraid" , and "can I let the sky fill what's missing, can I let my mouth do the listening".
Some may disagree but I would liken her to another favorite artist of mine: The Postal Service. I would say I even like her more than the Postal Service because of the one particular quality in the combination of her writing and delivery that is impossible to ignore and what ultimately makes her so enjoyable to listen to; all of her song radiate the same feeling that she is absolutely in love with making music and holds absolutely nothing back. Everybody who writes music or literature or whatever has a vein in them that they have to tap into to get that creative flow out of their innards and out into the world. Listening to Lights you can tell that not only has she tapped that creative vein of hers but it comes flowing out in a very pure sense and doesn't become convoluted in overanalysis. It simply is what it is and it's fantastic.
Seriously, go buy it. Now I have to get back to cleaning.
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