I mean, at first glimpse she was the sort of act I'd typically like. Indie pop with a focus on melody, Lights sparked a lot of early comparisons with Owl City with the release of her first album The Listening in 2009, mostly for her keyboard-driven catchiness, her usage of autotune to augment the synthetic sound, her occasional song related to faith, and her lyrics that toed the line between twee and outright adolescent. In fact, it was probably that last part that kept me keeping some amount of distance - her voice had more presence and power than Owl City's, but her lyrics never quite approached the same level of cleverness that occasionally saved Owl City. And to go by that first album, it'd be very easy - and somewhat unfair - to throw the Manic Pixie Dream Girl label on Lights - emphasis on 'girl' because with songs like 'Pretend' there was a certain 'regression to childhood' tendency that had some nuance but rubbed me the wrong way, even if the ultimate message of her album did imply maturity was the natural end goal.
Well, apparently Lights wasn't a fan of those particular comparisons, because most of the cutesy image went out the window for her sophomore release Siberia, at least in terms of her instrumentation. The soft, fluttering keyboards and effects were jettisoned in favour of heavy, icy dubstep-inspired synthpop, which gave the album a darker, grittier feel - and yet for some reason, it didn't really carry over into the lyrics or Lights' presentation. If anything, despite Lights' admittedly solid grasp of interesting poetry, the subject matter felt a little more mundane and pop-friendly, lacking some of the nuance that had characterized her previous work. On top of that, Siberia has not exactly aged well - while it might have preceded the dubstep-flavour that would come into prominence in 2012, it feels very much of its time in terms of mix balance and production, and as someone who has never really been a fan of the upper-to-midrange pop brand of dubstep, it didn't always work for me.
So I have to be honest, I had no idea what to expect with Lights' newest album 'Little Machines', but I was definitely curious to find out, in addition to supporting another promising and interesting Canadian artist. So I checked out the album: what did I get?