TORONTO - The synth-pop songbird known as Lights has etched so much ink across her tiny frame, she can only shrug when asked to point to her latest tattoo.
While the personable 24-year-old insists she can't remember, she happily directs attention to a freshly carved piece on her right forearm. It's an imposing sword she identifies as the Twinblade of the Phoenix from the massively popular computer game, "World of Warcraft."
It's an appropriate piece given that the singer -- whose career began with a charmed run that included a gold-selling debut and a Juno statuette -- has had to go to battle over the content of her second record, "Siberia," released this week.
The gritty CD represents a departure for the Timmins, Ont., native, whose past catalogue was as scrupulously polished as a politician's image. Her U.S. record label declined to release the album (it will come out on indie Last Gang Records south of the border) and some fans were turned off by the transformation, but Lights beams with pride as she discusses her artistic evolution.
"It's a weird place to be when you're making a second record," she said this week in an interview at a Toronto rock club.
"For me, it was kind of a make or break situation, because it's like, am I either going to give people the same thing and establish that that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, or try something completely different and maybe shake it up a little bit but make a record I really love?
"It was a scary place to be. I had to shed all those expectations of the way that I -- and other people -- wanted it to sound."
And, of course, fiddling with that formula was so scary primarily because the old mixture seemed to be working.
Lights -- nee Valerie Anne Poxleitner, but she changed her legal name to reflect her luminescent handle -- began making a name for herself years ago in her adopted home of Toronto, combining her fluttering voice and slick keyboards for a series of radio-ready, feather-weight pop ditties.
She won the Juno Award for best new artist before she'd released her first full-length record, a harbinger of the success she would have later in 2009 when her debut album, "The Listening," finally did hit shelves. It was a hit in Canada, peaking at No. 7 on the chart, and also drew ears in the U.S. and U.K.
Critical reaction was more mixed. Some of the positive notices featured a subtly condescending streak -- highly respected website All Music compared her to a "Daft Punk-junior dorm room chanteuse" -- while others tore into Lights with glee, with NME calling the album "utterly un-listenable" and awarding it a two out of 10 review score.
While "Siberia" wasn't intended as a bid for critical acclaim, Lights knew she wanted to present something with less polish.
"The last record was perfect -- I'm not saying it was perfect music, but the production (was)," she said. "Everything was in line, everything was tuned, everything was perfect. It was smooth and beautiful.
"But the new record is imperfect. It's gritty, and it's raw and a lot of it's live."
The question for Lights, then, was: "How can I dirty things up a little bit?"
The breakthrough came in part with the decision to collaborate with Graham Walsh and Brian Borcherdt, members of a Juno-nominated Toronto group with an unprintable name but a widely acknowledged pedigree for innovative electronic music.
Their job, in Lights' words, was to "stain" her otherwise pretty compositions.
The first song released from the album, "Everybody Breaks a Glass," was a bold announcement of her revised direction. Over clattering, distorted electronics, Lights lends her typically honeyed voice a more confrontational tone while gifted Canadian rapper Shad, also straying from his comfort zone, delivers an introspective verse.
When the song hit the Internet, Lights' fans -- more than 280,000 of them follow her on Twitter -- weren't necessarily unanimous in their appreciation of her new sound.
"It (was) super mixed," she says of the reaction. "(It) is probably the most extreme track on the record. People were freaking out.
"That's what we wanted. We wanted to shake it up. Let's get people talking about whatever we're going to do. I'd rather that than people say: 'I've heard this before. Moving on."'
Indeed, "Everybody Breaks a Glass" is the new record's most daring tune, but there are signs of Lights' evolution everywhere. On the lurching anthem "Flux and Flow," she locates a bit of dirt in her voice for a soaring chorus (or, as she calls it, "rage yelling"), while the nearly nine-minute finale "Day One" closes the album on a note of tense dread.
She says she wanted to incorporate textures from some of the artists she's been listening to in her spare time, including the innovative U.K. dubstep producers Burial and Skream.
Still, Lights is skilled at writing a melody and many of the tunes here are infectious, from the Postal Service-esque title track to the effervescent first single "Lies," one of the more purely pop moments on the record.
Both those tunes are straightforward love songs, with Lights cheerfully crooning in the latter: "Any book I'll ever read/ You'd be the line that sticks out to me."
Her recent engagement to Beau Bokan, lead singer of Phoenix metalcore outfit Blessthefall, might have something to do with the lovelorn lyrics.
"There's a lot of love songs on this record, and you know, you can't write about those things honestly until you experience it," she says with a coy smile.
"So you're coming from a good place when you can."
Yet she admits she's not sure whether her fans will be similarly smitten with her latest collection.
Some of her youngest followers might not appreciate the less poppy inclination of the new material and she'll have to fight to gain the attention of serious music fans who might have written her off before.
"But as long as you know you're making a record you love -- people will come and go but you're never going to regret what you're doing," said the singer, who's managed by CBC personality Jian Ghomeshi.
"Because I'm the one who has to play these (songs) every single day for the rest of my life. So hopefully they're good."
Still, she concedes that she's anxious to see how the album performs.
"I'm just as nervous as releasing my first one. I have butterflies. My palms are sweaty.... I am nervous to see what people say -- I want people to like it -- but I know there will be some people who don't.
"I've been waiting a long time for this and now it's here. You only get to release a second record once."
