Tuesday, July 28, 2015 10:18am ET by  
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Lights talks to Pressparty about her new album, writer's block and living her dream

Canadian sensation Lights made her impressive return last year with a brand new album named Little Machines and Pressparty recently caught up with her to chat about battling writer's block, becoming a new mother, and her views on being a woman in the music industry

1. Little Machines is an amazing record, so congratulations on that! The themes are so accessible and relatable, and there’s a lot of emotion in the lyrics. How do you feel your songwriting has evolved over the years?

Thanks for the good vibes! I suppose I have a bit more intention now when I sit down to write a song. I used to just wing it and see what would happen, but now I like to go in with an idea of what I want to say or how I want it to sound. It cuts down the fat a little bit. "You have your whole life to write your first record," they say. I don’t have that kind of time anymore.

2. Siberia was released back in 2011 (the acoustic version followed in 2013) and your new record, Little Machines, came out last year. Was there a creative reason for the three-year gap between albums?

I think with every album comes more and more pressure, whether from your label or fans or yourself, or just the worry that you'll let the aforementioned down. I started to back myself into a corner and ended up facing a bad stint of writer's block. Then comes the pressure to get another record out within two years. It was a journey to get myself back into a headspace where I really enjoyed making music again, but one I'm glad I took. I'd rather put out a quality record than rush it. 

3. What was the creative process like for Little Machines? What inspired you for the songs? Were there any books, movies, poetry etc. that influenced your song writing? Was there a certain location that you visited to write the songs?

To get myself out of that bout of creative dryness I worked at exercising different facets of my creativity. I did a lot of painting, took long walks listening to entire albums like Neil Young and Kanye (something that I hardly get a chance to do these days). I wrote a poem every night just to free my mind up lyrically and became really obsessed with Patti Smith, her work and her story. I was really inspired by 'Just Kids' and 'Woolgathering'. I also took a writing trip to Taos, New Mexico and lived in an Earthship (a carbon zero, off the grid home) for a week and wrote a song a day. Three of those ended up on the record! Meteorites in particular was about the meteors I watched while sitting in the hot springs in Rio Grande Canyon. An employee of the Earthship community showed me the way down the canyon and there we sat, a couple of strangers pretty much naked looking at this incredible view of the milky way. Was trippy as hell!

4. We read recently that you spent the final trimester of your pregnancy in the studio laying down vocals for the album! That’s dedication! Did pregnancy change your voice at all? What was that experience like?

I definitely had little to no abdominal strength in that last trimester and that was when I did all the hardest vocals on the record. I had to summon the strength from other areas of my body and I feel like I have full control of my voice now that I have my core back. What was actually harder was being back in the studio three days after the birth and trying to sing then, you feel like a deflated balloon in a chair trying to vocalize. It’s hilariously horrible.  

 

 

5. There’s an industry-wide conversation happening at the moment about women in music. What has your experience of being a woman navigating the music industry been like? Have people warned you against starting a family during your career, for example, or have you ever been told to change your appearance?

My experience in the industry has been pretty good so far. I'm fortunate to have never been put in a position where someone is allowed to tell me what I can or can't be. If I didn't already have a vision for my music and my appearance before I entered the industry I'm sure it would've been different. You know what they say, if you don't have any ideas someone will put them there for you. I will say though, the music industry is definitely not set up for motherhood; at least not yet. Though no one has outright tried dissuading me from starting a family, the infrastructure is just not there for it. I've been at venues where my child hasn't been allowed in because she is "underage". It's almost like, "okay if you want to be a musician and tour, you better not have kids!" There are some big artists like Gwen and Nelly Furtado that have toured with their children but at my level of touring you just don't see it that much. I still manage to take her everywhere with me, maintain a great relationship with her and haven't had to pass her off to anyone else for long periods of time. It's extra work but hopefully it helps women entering the industry understand they don't have to forfeit a right to a family in order to keep their career.  

6. Were there any female acts that inspired you to pursue music on a professional level?

Bjork might've been the first big motivation for me to create music that was my own brand and teach me that music is in fact rule-less, despite how it can feel sometimes. She is her own genre and that was pretty inspiring to me. 

7. Do you feel more connected to promoting or embracing female empowerment now that you have a daughter? Is that something you hope to pass onto her?

Definitely, I am always really careful not to assign gender to anything or make her feel like she needs to play with certain things or wear certain things because she's a girl. I try to avoid that mentality which is actually so deeply engrained in our culture, in TV shows, advertising, everything. I never really noticed it as much until I had a kid. I just want her to feel complete freedom in life to be who she is. 

8. What’s the best and worst thing about life on the road? 

I suppose the worst thing is constant tiredness, inability to take a day off when you feel like you need it, and sometimes just wanting to be at home in a coma on the couch but you're on the other side of the world. I've only been at home three weeks out of this year so far! The best thing is that I get to make music and jump around on stage for a living. That's incredible. I'm really lucky and I remind myself every day that I'm living the dream. 

 

 

 

9. Your music videos are so captivating and we love your visual for ‘Same Sea'. Are you the creative force behind them? Which video was the most fun and the most challenging to shoot?

Some of my videos are entirely my idea, and some I just seed the idea. 'Same Sea' was a team effort with myself and Amit Dubrai, the director, we wanted to spin on the idea of connectedness (which is what the song's about) and show four different incarnations of myself through different lives spanning the space and time continuum. Music videos are fun because it's an opportunity to basically role play. I play dress up and pretend to be somebody else, someone way cooler than me. Like a cyborg? Come on! I can safely say I'll never be that in real life. The 'Up We Go' video takes the trophy for most challenging and fun all at once. It was all one take so a three minute shoot, but it took fourteen hours to choreograph the hundreds of moving parts involved to create the most bizarre trip up an elevator. When you hear cheering for the reveal at the end you better believe that's real cheering!

10. What are you reading, watching, playing and listening to at the moment? 

Reading 'The Wicked and the Divine" and "Saga" comics, watching 'Game of Thrones' and 'Doomsday Preppers', and listening to Frida Sundemo and my girl K. Flay. We took her out on our last UK tour and I've loved her stuff ever since.   

11. And finally, Siberia Acoustic is such a great record. Do you have any similar plans for Little Machines? For example, the structure and arrangement of ‘Portal’ - we can almost hear it working with a folk-inspired sound. It would be interesting to hear it reworked in a different way!

Good intuition. Actually, the original version of 'Portal', which was written when I was at the Earthship community, was acoustic and folky. I do have plans for a release, and I think the fans will be pleased with what I've got for my spin on Little Machines. Different than anything I've done in the past. Stay tuned!

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Watch Lights' music video for 'Up We Go', which will be released as a single in the UK on September 25, here: