The first thing to understand reading this review is before tonight I knew very little about Lights. Yes I had YouTubed and Spotified her (ooer) but that and some basic info I got from wikipedia, which we all know is 100% accurate – that was all I knew.
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You also need to understand that in terms of a venue, Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff is probably one of the smaller venues in the city, but it’s pedigree and history matches any other venue like for like. The Cavern Club in Liverpool gave us The Beatles, and Clwb Ifor Bach gave us “Cool Cymru” in the latter part of the 90s. It’s a fantastic little venue – about 150-250 people, and tonight Light’s certainly set the place…err… alight (that’s the only pun I’ll use I promise)
Also, you can disallow the fact I met and interviewed her before the gig – my opinion is strictly based on what I saw & heard – but yes, she’s really nice, and grounded.
If you’ve not heard her music before I’d suggest you have a look on YouTube. Without being derogatory to the likes of Cher Lloyd – she does look like her – but in fact Lights’ has more pure talent having written two albums and had big success in Canada – and winning their equivalent of the Brits, a Juno.
From the moment she stepped on stage, she had the small crowd in the palm of her hand. A good performer will always tell you they can only be as good as what they play to, in a feeding of the audience kind of way, and the audience were there to give back in the bucket load.
I’ve made a comparison to Cher Lloyd, but in reality her voice is very similar to Robyn – anthemic at times with a lot of heart whatever the song was. She has two albums worth of material and brought every track to life with such an energy, the 1 hour 15 minute she was on stage just went by in a blink of an eye.
If you get chance to see her on her brief UK tour;
02.17.2012 Brighton, United Kingdom Haunt
02.19.2012 Birmingham, United Kingdom Academy 3
02.20.2012 Glasgow, United Kingdom King Tuts
02.21.2012 Leeds, United Kingdom Cockpit
02.23.2012 Manchester, United Kingdom Soundcontrol
02.24.2012 London, United Kingdom Scala
DO IT!!!
Failing that, check her out on Youtube, Spotify, or the album Siberia is released on March 12th.
Final thought (and only the second pun)
Lights – Shining bright in the musical mess that sometimes is life
(With thanks to MusicEyz for setting this up also www.broradio.fm for the use of the digital recorder – interview to follow)