It's a huge step," she readily admits. "For a year after my
first record, I was confused and searching. I was writing all
over the place and not finding anything that was essentially
different. But after tour last year I was turned onto dubstep."
The genre's grimy beats and sonic minimalism influenced the
creation of Siberia, if not necessarily shaping the music itself
(though she does pay homage with a dubstep drop on "Fourth
Dimension.") Rather, dubstep led Lights away from the
"perfection" of her past work. "Everything was tuned and timed
just right. The new stuff is raw and gritty but still pop with a
focus on the melodies. It's the marriage of those two that make
it really different and unlike anything I've ever done before."
This dirtier direction came from collaborating with Holy Fuck, a
fellow Juno-winning, electronic-influenced Canadian act who she
met when both played the dance stage at last year's Reading and
Leeds festivals in the UK. Impressed by their "grime and grit,"
she decided to see what might happen when she infused her pop
sensibilities with their experimental tendencies. "I went over to
Brian [Borcherdt's] house with Graham [Walsh] and we just started
jamming until something started to form, as sed to the last
record which was more structured and less live feeling. We wired
old synths and toy synths through all these pedals and machines
from their junk table," she laughs. "They're straight-up mad
scientists." Her other main collaborator was Shad, who she knew
through a mutual friend. "He's so humble and so intelligent," she
says, "and I knew he'd kill it." Indeed, Shad drops his typically
articulate knowledge on the crunchy, soiled "Everybody Breaks a
Glass" and "Flux and Flow," which Lights describes as "the
perfect marriage of this sweet melody and the hardest beat ever.
It's about how that applies to life because you have to be soft
and you have to be strong." Lyrically, the album is light years
from her last, which was written when the singer, who spent much
of her childhood travelling to places like the Philippines and
Jamaica with her missionary parents, had left the nest and landed
in Toronto. "A lot of those songs came from a sad but hopeful
place. I was alone and pondering a lot. I'm a lot more aware of
the person I am now and each of these songs is about an
experience I've gone through," she says. "This record came from a
very happy place." Then why is it called Siberia? "It's based on
something that was said to me, that we could be happy even in a
place like Siberia. It was such an inspiring thing to say,
because Siberia is cold and a little daunting and represents
unfamiliar territory." That last bit is particularly sticky for
Lights, who left her safe pop haven for these unexplored sonics,
though the metaphor carries even further because despite being an
infamous land of ice and exile, Siberia is epically beautiful and
so is Siberia. The dividend from her early award-winning
success--not to mention her sprawling online footprint which
includes over a half-million Facebook fans and over a
quarter-million Twitter followers, not to mention a cult fanbase
amongst the Comic-Con set--is her current artistic freedom. Her
up-for-anything experimentations with Holy Fuck produced an
astoundingly eclectic album that belies its snow white title.
Siberia's diversity leapfrogs from the hip-shaking dance-pop of
"Toes" and the arms-up anthem "Banner" to the singer-songwriter-y
romantic ballad "Cactus in the Valley," written on an acoustic
guitar, and the nine- minute instrumental album closer "Day One"
which sounds crafted by a rusty, love robot--but that didn't
make her sopre album any easier. "For the first
one, nobody had any expectations for what I was supposed to sound
like. You write your first record only for yourself. You don't
have fans yet and there are no preconceptions. So I had to
reinvent myself all over again, rediscover myself as an artist
and remember I can do whatever I want." Siberia`s beats skitter
and thwack, the retro electronics fire like decomposing lasers
and the analog synths dirty up her trademark pretty melodies,
propelling Lights' emotion-soaked but still-cute croon into her
sprawling, imperfect new sound. Call it anti-electro, dream-step
or perhaps even grit-pop. Whatevs. Just rest assured that it's
the same bright Lights; she's just built herself a bigger city.
