The Canadian multi-media artist created a comic book series along with her new album.
It’s said that if you can find a way to get paid to do the things you love, it doesn’t even feel like work. Lights, the Canadian electropopper who’s headlining a show at the Majestic Theatre on March 13, found a way to triple-synergize the concept.
Skin & Earth, the album she released last year, isn’t just a collection of 14 songs — it’s actually one leg of a multimedia-concept tripod. Lights also wrote and designed a six-issue comic book series about Enaia, a scrappy, scarlet-haired heroine searching for love and hope in a corporate-ruled, post-apocalyptic world. The songs on the album reflect and complement the story and the art, and vice versa.
“This is a dream come true for me,” she says, calling from California a few days before the start of her current tour. “I’ve always wanted to be a comics creator, and I’ve been a fan of the medium for so long.”
She knew it was gonna be fun to combine her passions. What she didn’t expect is the ways in which they’d influence, even supercharge, her creative process. She started with a storyline, breaking it into 12 parts, each of which has its own name and theme (heartbreak, vengeance, etc.).
Multimedia artist Lights released an album to complement her comic book series.
“I correlated each one to a color — like pink, burgundy and purple — and the pieces of it came to me naturally,” she explains. “It was like, this is the mood I want to convey. It was an immediate creative launchpad for me. It eliminated the discussion I usually had at the beginning of every recording session.”
She dubbed the process a “three-way creative tornado” and it produced like one: She generated more than 50 songs, some inspired by the sci-fi/fantasy story she was telling, some by her own situation. For instance, you can draw ties to Enaia’s tale in “New Fears,” an almost bluesy grinder that builds slowly into a soaring, pounding chorus. But it’s also about motherhood: Lights has a 4-year-old daughter.
“In the comic book, it’s tied to this moment Enaia felt completely cared for,” Lights says. “But there’s also a dark side to it. It’s the feeling of being a parent, and the horrible visions of bad things happening to your child.”
Her live set is definitely influenced by Skin & Earth’s concepts — as are the album cover, comic books and music videos. Lights will be sporting red hair to match her character on stage (“I’m basically a walking cosplaying version of her” ), but don’t expect a conceptual panel-by-panel recreation of the comic at her Majestic show. Her sets will also include material from her three earlier releases.
“This is the most I’ve creatively invested in a tour,” she says. Meanwhile, the arsenal of songs she’s already penned suggests some kind of sequel for Enaia is probably on the horizon.
“When I completed the last issue, I knew how much of a buzzkill it can be when the story ends badly,” she says. “The ending I chose, it made sure to open the door to a new story. This is the beginning. This is the origin story of a very strong female character.” n