The Bite Magazine - Summer 2019 - Issue 25

W ith her Debbie Harry-esque hair and steely strik- ing eyes, it sometimes feels like singer Grace Lightman is staring right through you in her music videos. Her latest one is for new track ‘An Ordinary Life’ taken from her forthcoming debut album Silver Eater out via Handsome Dad Records on 19th July. Looking like a member of a space crew in her black jumpsuit with a sheer panel, Grace’s voice echoes amongst the trees as she sings about ‘an ordinary life’. The video was made with the help of director and producer Alex Lightman who worked alongside the singer to create a striking visual. The singer’s album is actually based on the narrative of an alien called ‘The Silver Eater’ who is on the run from NASA for reasons unknown.While on the run, she ends up coming to Earth and disguises herself as a human, trying to figure out life’s little nuances with human beings along the way. “She’s not supposed to be on Earth and falls in love with humanity as a result,” Grace told The Line of Best Fit in May 2019,“but she’ll never quite be human.” This may explain the space-type costumes or the unusual clothing that the singer tends to wear in her videos. ‘An Ordinary Life’ features Grace’s yearning vocals with a propulsive baseline throughout and represents her narrative on the desperate need to fit in when you feel different. In the video, she is seen as an outlander wandering in nature, trying to disappear in an attempt to fulfil her desire for an ordinary life.“An Ordinary Life is a love song to the human race, from the perspective of the Silver Eater. It’s bittersweet as it comes from a place of awareness that she will never be able to have the ordinary life she wants, almost like unre- quited love.” One of the more personal songs on the album, it captures the alienation in a wistful way that,“I hope people can relate to. In our moments of vulnerability, we do just wish we could fit in, even if we know we shouldn’t try to.” One-part ABBA, two-parts Twin Peaks, and mediated through the character of the eponymous Silver Eater, an extraterrestrial fallen to earth, doomed to imitate and falls in love with the very human they must remain a fugitive from, Grace has achieved something fiendishly rare, a concept album that combines narrative ambition with a sly undercurrent of dark humour. http://www.gracelightman.com Grace Lightman AN ORDINARY LIFE Image courtesy of Satellite 414 bite new music