Lights: Lights

It is honestly something of a relief to hear this debut EP by the precociously talented 21 year-old singer/songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist (she even designed her own album art) who goes under the alluringly identity-shrouding name of Lights. As the pop mainstream becomes increasingly fragmented along glibly arbitrary genre lines, to the point that “pop” currently exists as little more than a stylistic seasoning for unholy marketing hybrids (punk-pop, country-pop, teen-pop, etc), Lights remains a true believer in pop music of the most achingly, guilelessly, shamelessly melodic variety. Loaded with super-sized chorus hooks, shimmering synth whirls, propulsive drum loops, charmingly awkward diary-entry-style lyrics (“Seems somebody put out the moon / Now the road is a minefield / I can’t follow the way she moves / I can’t see past the shadows” is the kind of adolescent poetry that can only sound utterly blissful in this context) and delivered in a breathy, girlish vocal style pitched somewhere between Kylie Minogue and Susanna Hoffs, Lights infuses her music with both an unerring ear for tunefulness and a defiant conviction in her material that is genuinely refreshing.