Lights interview

interview by Bill Palmer

After entering the iTunes pop charts at #1 last month in her native Canada, the debut album from Lights is being met with such anticipation worldwide that her name was a trending topic on Twitter last night ahead of today‘s U.S. release. If such a build-up for an artist’s first full-length record seems unusual, perhaps it’s because of the equally unusual path she’s taken to get here, which has included a few years of singles and EPs, and a number of her songs appearing in television commercials. In our recent interview, the fast-talking Lights (real name Valerie Poxleitner) let me in on everything from the influences behind her unique brand of synth-pop to her multiplayer online gaming experiences with fans and more. One thing is for sure: if you haven’t yet heard of Lights or her music, that’s likely to change very soon…



You’ve taken an unusual path over the past three years. Has it ever been frustrating over that time, to have parts of your music out there but not be able to point to something and say “this is my album”?



Definitely. It’s been a long road for sure. The first taste of my music, February Air, coming out I think back in 2006. So for a few years I’ve been a little antsy and I am pretty apt to get impatient. But I have a fantastic team around me including my manager, who’s always encouraging me to be patient and that it’s best to wait it out. And I’m really glad, now that it’s all said and done and the record’s out, that I was able to be patient over the years and make the right decisions and put the record together in the way that it was supposed to be. And I feel like everyone got a little taste of it when it was ripe, and now it’s cooked and ready to come out.



The first thing I notice with The Listening is that I see that title and then I look at the artwork and in the little drawing of you, you have no mouth. Is there any symbolism to that?


Yeah, it actually kind of started from the Sailor Moon transitions. At the very intro of every Sailor Moon episode, when they’re doing their transitions into their superhero bodies and they don’t have mouths, they just have eyes, you just see their eyes. It’s a very Japanimation kind of thing. And to me, when I first started noticing that, it was haunting and a little disturbing, but yet beautiful and powerful. And I thought I want to have this sentiment come across in the artwork. So I started to think about the ideas for the artwork and the concepts for the record, and it’s called The Listening, and it really made sense to not have a mouth because the singing is finished and now we’re just listening. And the artwork started to build itself up, and I wanted to make it sort of Watchmen-inspired, Dawn of the Dead inspired, like a zombieland where you can’t tell if I’m one of them or I’m something different.

You play every acoustic instrument out there, guitar, piano, and so on. I’m curious how you found your way over to the more synthetic sounds, the synthesizer stuff.


At the core of music and everything that I create, there has to be a good song that can be stripped down to nothing and played on its own. And if the song can be played that way, then you know that you’ve got a good foundation. And so it goes with anything. If you build a house with a good foundation, no matter what you put on the house it’ll be a great house. So that’s the core of it for me.



Once I get those songs written on the acoustic instrument, whether it’s guitar or piano, then I surround it with all of the fun stuff. And that’s the really fun part for me, where it’s grounds to be creative. It’s a blank canvas and you can put whatever you want in it because you know you have a good song, no matter what you put on it, it’s going to sound good so it’s only like gravy. And the electro-world fascinates me because you can come up with any kind of sound, any left-field weird spacy sound, and mess with it enough that it becomes real and you can invent things and be creative. And it’s all made possible through the power of synthetic instruments. You’re not limited to just a guitar sound or a drum sound.



In concert performances, is it somewhere between those two extremes?


Yeah, it’s definitely somewhere in between. I’ve experimented a lot with the live thing, trying to find the thing that suits the music the best, and I kind of feel like I’ve landed upon that. It’s three of us on stage. Me and Adam, one of the guys in my band, play all keyboards, so it’s all synthetic instruments and then one drummer. So there’s just three of us. We have tracks running that keep the electro feel going. It’s definitely made a little raunchier live, so you get that awesome live dynamic, because with all-digital, things can sound a little bit flat. So we try to raunchify all the bass lines, if that’s even a word, make everything sound a little bit more abrasive, and then the live drums give it that live energy. It’s definitely a little edgier when you see it live.



Some of these songs on the new record have been out there for a little while. Was there a temptation to tinker with them for the new record?


When I create a song, I give myself no more than four days to finish it, because within that time you can still use the power that spawned the song in the first place. After four days it gets diluted and then you kind of forget what you were writing about and you lose that emotion and the energy that spawned the song. So that being said, outside of those four days it’s not worth going back, because you’re not gonna be in the same mindspace, even changing things. So I like to leave things they way they were, because there’s some kind of charm about the time that they were made, and that’s probably contributing to the way that they turn out in the long run.



The only one that I did change is Ice, which is a new version on the full length record. That was actually remixed by a guy named Spike Stent, who’s mixed Madonna and Björk, and I wanted to hear what he could do for the song. He added this new crazy synth and gave it a little energy and beefed it up. So that was one instance where I thought it really worked to beef it up.

You’ve mentioned in a number of places that you play online games, World of Warcraft and such. Are you as much into that stuff as it sounds like? Are you one of those online gaming addicts?


Doing what I do, you can’t get addicted to it because you simply don’t have the time. But I definitely get a couple hours in a day, and it’s a great getaway, honestly. It’s helped to inspire me in a lot of ways too. I love being able to be a warrior and a fighter girl.



There’s a song on the album called Lions, and it’s chock full of World of Warcraft references. So I can’t deny the fact that WOW has helped me.



Is this something where fans can come in and find your character and team up for campaigns?


Definitely. One of my characters I had posted on MySpace for awhile, and it got to the point where I couldn’t really play that character anymore because it was constantly just chatting, it wasn’t really me getting much gameplay. So I transferred the character. I’ll probably post another character just for talks and hanging out.



So it’s been a positive experience for you.


It’s fantastic because when I get to chat with random people who I don’t know at all in World of Warcraft, you’re forced to judge them based on the things that they’re saying or the humor that comes across, just purely conversational. So it takes away that aesthetic thing that I think is a pretty bad way to judge someone on a first basis. And when I do actually get to meet someone that I’ve been hanging out within Warcraft a lot, it’s amazing because you know this person’s heart, kind of, and then you see them in real life and they’re that much more incredible.



If you have a strong debut in iTunes in the U.S., it could open a lot of doors. Is there anything that if you’re super-famous a year from now, that you want to make sure you don’t forget? Is there advice that you would give to yourself?


When I first started doing music I thought about that, because for some reason I knew this was gonna happen, and I knew that things can get out of control if you lose your head. I always said I need to formulate one sentence that my music is founded upon, that I can always look back to and remember why I started doing this. And it was I’m creating music to reach as many people as I can in a positive way, with the best influence that I can.

The Listening is available in iTunes today. Learn more at iamlights.com