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s-o-n-de-r · 7 years

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A Rush of Blood to the Head: Sensuality and Substance in LIGHTS’ ‘Skin & Earth’ Era

Ruts and stagnation can be difficult to avoid for musicians as their careers progress if interest dwindles, labels lockdown, or plain old boredom enters the process, and you’ll hear it.

You can flop, or you can go all out. For Canadian synth-pop trailblazer Lights Bokan (often stylized LIGHTS), she went all out.

Skin & Earth, the latest by the Timmins, Ontario native, doesn’t exist just as a music album. It’s also been given another life: Lights not only recorded the music but wrote and illustrated an entire comic series to go with it. She’s dabbled in the comic (and animation) world back in her early days with Audio Quest: A Captain Lights Adventure, but this is an all-in sort of endeavor.

It’s familiar territory for her long-time fans, though. Those who have stuck with her over the years have come to expect her to push creative boundaries, or at least keep things interesting. Some of those ventures include stripping away her electronics to make gentle acoustic versions of her albums, selling original paintings, or religiously making vlogs and doing livestreams. But even as far her records go, you won’t get bored transitioning from one to the other. Each has its own character, from the dreamy soundscapes of The Listening to the cold adventuring spirit of Siberia to the pep of Little Machines. Even her acoustic albums have different structure and depth from one another. If there was ever a musician that you wouldn’t expect to get stale, it’s Lights. When you hear her voice, there’s no mistaking her for anyone else out there.

This is the case for Skin & Earth as well. Even disregarding the whole other world that the comic series brings in, Skin & Earth is another distinct chapter in her discography. Skin & Earth is a totally different Lights – sexy and groovy and unapologetic. Literally, too, as she emulates the aesthetic of her comic’s main character En, most notably with scorching, fire-red hair. But it’s also just enough like previous albums that you’re not going to be totally alienated. This is a line she has always toed well.

The album eschews the baked-in dance and synth elements of Little Machines for drum-and-bass pop, songs with r’n’b rhythm and trap beats and vocal flow we haven’t really heard from Lights before. This isn’t to say that classic Lights elements aren’t there (“Giants”), but there’s a definite theme to Skin & Earth. In fact, some of the songs that embrace this new direction the most are the best on the album. “Kicks” is the catchiest, “Skydiving” is titillating and adventurous, and “We Were Here” is wispy and mysterious, a song for late-night drives. But Lights is no one-trick-pony. Skin & Earth features some innovative meanderings, notably the emotional and gentle “Morphine,” the sludgy “Savage” (featuring drumming from Twenty One Pilots’ Joshua Dun), and the big closing anthem in “Almost Had Me,” perhaps her strongest album ender yet. Skin & Earth wears its best qualities on its sleeve. “Morphine” and “Moonshine” are clearly not songs about substance use, but rather, intoxication is the messages’ medium. “Skydiving” may or may not be about sex, but it easily could be. The primal, tactile nature of the album’s title feeds directly into both its musical composition and lyrical content.

Lights’ personal re-invention, from the scorching red hair to her new musical direction, commands the mythology of this album. Many artists conveniently stumble into re-defining themselves for new record cycles; Lights has done so genuinely and with more authority than others by bringing her fictional avatar to life. Again, it’s an all-in approach. In fact, so much about Lights’ aura on and off stage defines and tints her career. Her motherhood (she has one child, Rocket), her feminism, and her creative independence may not always have a direct, one-to-one translation to her music, but it impacts how you view and understand her music.

This is why her live sets are so attention-grabbing. There are few musicians who catch your eyes and ears like she does – perhaps Tycho, with their immersive analog synths and invigorating visuals, or Twenty One Pilots with their frantic passion, but it’s a short list. Somewhere between campy over-indulgence and apathetic boredom sits a sweet spot for live performances, and Lights is part of the 10 percent or so in that sweet spot. Awash in vivid red, purple, and blue lighting, she played a range of songs from Skin & Earth and Little Machines, while alternating Siberia’s “Flux and Flow” every other night. On this tour opening for PVRIS, you won’t find many deep cuts or acoustic sessions or anything from The Listening era, which is unfortunate because those deeper paths through her catalog are the true Lights experience, usually relegated to headlining slots. In fact, the idea of her opening for PVRIS really shows the craze that band has cultivated and tapped into, even when Lights was halfway through her career when PVRIS started playing shows.

Her contrast with the moody and dark electro-rock band might seem counter-intuitive, but the juxtaposition is actually what separated her and made her distinct, especially with the aforementioned brawn of the new songs. Many of her songs are meant to groove to, and groove to them she does. She actually gets away from her keyboard and roams the stage more frequently than she has in the past – a good step for a show that is primarily carried by the strength of her unmistakable singing voice.

It did feel strange only getting a relatively small section of her discography after having experienced years of buildup from early tours packed with songs such as “River” or “My Boots,” but that’s the way these things go. Skin & Earth deserved the majority of her set list anyway, not just because it’s her brand-new record, but because it lives on such a larger scale through the comics.

The staggered release of the comic book issues (a few came out before the album, and a few are still due to be released) helps keep attention and interest alive in a way that’s useful and entertaining for the instant-stream, now-now-now music world. New issues give people a reason to go back to the album even after digesting it. But it will be interesting to see where the whole Skin & Earth package, from all comic issues to the album to the effervescent artist herself, is in another six months or so. In the meantime, there are still a few dates left to her tour with PVRIS where you can experience that whole package.

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Article and photos by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Like this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography publication at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you like this!