Lights
20^th May 2010
King Tut’s, Glasgow.

There is a reason that King Tut's on St Vincent Street has the accolade "quite possibly the finest small venue in the world." Regardless of whether it is at its 300 capacity or not, the atmosphere is always pretty special and electric.

Now, the turnout for Lights wasn't quite a sell-out, but from the crowd reaction to her moving her way from the back of the venue to the stage, you wouldn't have been able to tell.

In this country, Lights can contribute a lot of her fan base from her online exploits -her MySpace (myspace.com/lights) has had near enough 25 million plays, she is one of those artists who is in constant contact with fans via twitter (twitter.com/LIGHTS) and that's before her YouTube account is taken into consideration (youtube.com/lights)

Not bad for a pocket-sized girl from Canada who writes songs about computer games and only released her first full length album in the UK three days before this show!

 
I'm the first to admit that I'm not too familiar with her back catalogue, which consists of a few EPs, full length and a handful of covers that have ended up online, but after seeing her at Give It A Name last year in Manchester I was confident that it wasn't going to be an issue - regardless I was going to be entertained and quite possibly wowed.

Support acts that involve streamers and balloons with a healthy dose of crowd participation usually rate pretty highly for me and Rich Aucoin had all of that in bucket loads. On the stage was a white backdrop with scenes from old movies interjected with the sing-a-long lyrics from his songs (or hipster rapping, if you will) and for one of his last songs had him dancing around the crowd, scaring people having conversations at the bar!

And it was a similar sort of personable approach that started off the Lights set. We just wandered down from the back of the venue and just came through the crowd, teamed with the fact that there was no barrier separating the stage from the crowd anyway, everything had a nice, cozy feel to it.

To begin with slight technical problems affected her microphone, but these were just laughed off and no one seemed to mind. Such is Lights, she is adorable! Said technical problems were fixed quite quickly and everything was back on track.

 Her set consisted mostly of songs from her EPs including February Air, Drives My Soul and Ice - all of which also appear on her album The Listening - as well as album tracks like Second Go and the World of Warcraft themed Lions.

Her stage was very organic, just her and her two piece male band (on drums and keyboards respectively) with Lights on occasion busting out her trusty keytar a couple of times, and for such a 'fairly small-sized girl' she has quite the voice. She sounded great, sometimes singing so loud that a microphone, broken or not, wasn't really required. But that can be attributed to Tut's itself, it's so small that mics are neither hear nor there sometimes.  

So, if electro-pop songs about love, life and computer games is what your after - Lights is your girl. If, like me, you aren't too familiar with her work but enjoy a good dance - Lights is probably your girl too!

- Jen