Group seeks positive feel on Snakehouse
warner music photo
The Cliks’ debut album Snakehouse is now available in stores.
What do David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Madonna all have in common? While how they looked upon first breaking onto the music scene has been seriously distorted (for better or worse), their music has been upheld as some of the best in the biz. Their obsession with sound — not how they look to the listeners — is what makes them great.
If this is any mantra to have in today’s music scene, The Cliks are clearly on their path to euphoria. In the case of this Toronto band, what you see is not necessarily what you get, but what you hear sure is.
“Everybody ages and images fall apart,” proclaims the band’s lead singer Lucas Silveira. “With good music, if it’s good, it will always be good.”
His stress on the music may be derived from the fact that most press currently surrounding the group has been on Silveira’s identity. While today he bears the name Lucas, he was born Lilia before undergoing double mastectomy surgery. The band’s name, thought up by Silveira’s ex-girlfriend, parallels the male-female divide.
But Silveira doesn’t want curiosity about his gender to bash preconceptions of the The Cliks as a typical “female” band (which includes a trio of supporting girl-rockers); he wants the music to. Confidently, he says, “The greatest thing about this band is that we’re unexpected talent. We play our instruments quite well and I think the songs that I’ve written are pretty good.”
So does Cyndi Lauper, a big fan of The Cliks, says Silveira. After signing with Warner Music in Canada and Tommy Boy in the U.S., she invited the band to join the upcoming True Colors Tour. The showcase, with one Canadian stop in Toronto, was arranged to generate awareness of discrimination in the GLBT community and supports the Human Rights Campaign.
Silveira’s pursuit of positively prompted him to join the likes of Erasure, Debbie Harry and the Dresden Dolls on the tour. Likewise, The Cliks’ debut album Snakehouse was a product of turning the negative into positive.
Lyrics were fuelled by a series of tragedies in Silveira’s life including the end of a six-and-a-half year long relationship, his father having a stroke, his best friend’s rediagnosis of cancer and the death of his grandmother, all occurring over two months.
“Instead of sitting around, grovelling, being depressed, I just write a song.” He says it was the music that saved him. “It’s what keeps me going. Hopefully, it will be something to keep somebody else going.”
