Lights - Siberia (2011)
Every so often, something brilliant flies under the radar of these self-proclaimed "music critics" that like to talk shit about "pretentious people" while being pretentious as hell (HEY, THAT'S ME!!), and I think "What about this album?! Why aren't you freaking out about this?!" because when I love an album, I get ready to climb on top of an apartment in the Bronx with a megaphone and a glock, ready to have an intense six-hour-long police-standoff in order to bring promotion for the album in the news, so other people will listen and understand what the fuck I'm obsessing over this week. I mean, when I got into Dead Kennedys as a teenager, you couldn't get me to shut the fuck up about "THEY'RE KINDA LIKE SYSTEM OF A DOWN BEFORE SYSTEM OF A DOWN WAS A THING" and trying to force burnt CDs of "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables" and "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death" on my friends. The point is, I've got a nine by my side every time the wheels slide, and the wheels are about to help me skedaddle over to my latest vacation destination, megaphone in hand, because "Siberia" by Lights is one of the most punk fucking rock albums I've ever heard.
Lemme explain: With the release of her debut album "The Listening" in 2009, yeah, I actually thought it was a great album for what it was, even if I could fully acknowledge its faults, but she was essentially being marketed as a new popstar. Cute and innocent look, inoffensive music that didn't take many risks, and it jumped onto the whole "we can put new wave synthesizers in pop!!" revival that it seemed like Owl City had seemingly jump-started just a few months before, prompting people to acknowledge Lights as almost being like a female equivalent of Owl City. Lights then put out a respectable acoustic EP in 2010, going as far as to cover the punk rock band Rancid, and then, wouldn't you believe it, she appeared on Bring Me the Horizon's late-2010 release "There Is a Hell, Believe Me, I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret." which shocked the hell out of some people, but wouldn't you know it: It turns out that Lights used to be a guitarist in a metal band as a teenager! Crazy shit. With the squeaky-clean sounding "The Listening", the acoustic EP, and appearances on a metalcore album under her belt, the only thing left for her to do at this time was to make "Siberia", an album that walked the tight-rope between remaining in the pop-world and saying "fuck you" to it.
This album has everything that a great pop album should have: A charming vocalist, memorable lyrics, and melodies as infectious as the Ebola virus potentially massacring your entire city, but while this album has all of those qualities, it oftentimes attempts to hide and/or downplay its cute, ear-grabbing nature by combining it with the abrasive: This album's production is straight-up fucking Rice Krispies: This shit can snap, crackle, and pop in your headphones or stereo, but it's all intended. Even just listening to the first song on the album, which happens to be the title track, shows immediately that while this album is nowhere near being as abrasive or musically challenging as, let's say, a Death Grips album, it's actually kind of gritty for a pop album by someone that the general public began to disregard as being some innocent popstar. Just listen to how noisy those drums are, how gritty the synth is, and how Lights seems to not even notice it, singing softly over it like she has no idea of the dirty, muddy instrumentation underneath her. While this isn't evident in all of the tracks, this album's production, when it feels like it, doesn't give a fucking shit if it makes it to the radio or not, all it cares about is leaving not a mark, but a stain on you.
This album is much darker than "The Listening" was, with Lights using a fuller range of her voice, generally singing in a lower tone, and (at least, as far as I can tell) no noticeable autotune to rely on as a crutch that she clearly didn't need. This time around, the music focuses more on the raw, abrasive elements that I previously mentioned, but also brings in ambient, dubstep, and the occasional hip-hop section provided by rapper Shad on not one, but two tracks, and yeah, I can take it or leave it, but his sections on the songs generally don't do much for me on either side of the board, not because I dislike Shad, he's got a cool voice, but because they always tend to come straight outta the left-field in comparison to the rest of the song. Still, coming from the girl that sampled a fucking Nas song for her last album, to see her finally feeling comfortable enough to incorporate a rapper into her music shows that she's expanding her area of comfort in an attempt to not (perhaps accidentally) recreate her last album.
There are so many songs on here that could've and SHOULD'VE been hits on the radio ala Taylor Swift and crew. "Toes" is absolutely infectious, maybe even to the same level as Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe", "Banner" is beautiful and bounces with such joy that you can't help but smile, and "Timing is Everything" has such an explosive chorus near the end of the track that it's hard to ignore how perfectly it's implemented. These songs all have something in common: First, no matter how catchy they are, you can tell that there's some serious raw instrumentation that went into it, and secondly, you'll likely be blown the fuck away that these tracks never got -that- popular outside of the internet, but hey, you might find yourself saying that about nearly every track on here: Lights is one hell of a songwriter, vocalist, and musician in general. Even on the album's cheeriest moments, such as the painfully cute "Peace Sign", it doesn't sound like a completely ridiculous idea that Lights could do something with Death Grips, because as shown by her vision for this album, Lights ain't afraid to get her hands dirty. Er.. Her MUSICAL hands. JAZZ-HANDS!! AM I RIGHT GUYS?! HAHA WOW I AM FUCKING AMAZING!! *SUCKS MY OWN DICK*
Here's how Lights is more punk rock than our favorite bands who get on stage to scream at us for having Donald Trump as our president: Even with how abrasive, noisy, and distant these instrumentals can get, there's still that signature Lights charm that really helps nail the tracks home, and shit, dude, she ends the album on a 9 minute instrumental noise-jam with Holy Fuck. That is this album's ending. Not the bittersweet and calming "And Counting..." with its lyrics focusing around missing her boyfriend (now husband) Beau Bokan while they're both on tour in different areas.. But a fucking 9 minute jam of noise, to extend the final middle finger to the music industry that she surely knew was going to eat her alive if she let it. It's like she was saying "You want the cute, innocent girl from the last album? No, I know what you could do with that." and promptly lights the entire recording studio on fire in one satisfactory blaze of glory. Even these mainstream bands that have something to do with punk or one of its subgenres, take Green Day for example, would have the balls to do that, not only to the music industry, but to their own fans. Either you like it or you don't, but Lights doesn't give a fuck.
The funny thing about this album is that since she was coming off of her newfound fame with "The Listening", was keeping up appearances via acoustic performances, collaborations, and the such, Lights could have been (and could even be RIGHT NOW) one of the biggest things to ever happen when it comes to the topic of female popstars, she has the look, the vocal talent, the songwriting chops.. But it's apparent that despite the massive amount of love she has for all that she cares about in life, she doesn't give a fuck about taking the throne, she just cares about leaving an impression, and as the album closes out from its final attacks, synthesizers crying out for help all the while, it's likely that the impression it leaves on you will be something around the lines of "..Holy shit, that was great." and then, my friend, you'll see what a brilliant musician Lights truly is: A not-so-hidden gem of a generation.
9/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
