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Sister act taking control of show
Cranbrook’s Lillix produced, wrote third album
Possibly the only thing harder than starting over is coming back. Lillix is doing both.
The sisters Tasha-Ray and Lacey-Lee Evin, who formed the band in Cranbrook in 1997, release their third album on Tuesday. Titled Tigerlily, which was the original name of the band, the album is a new beginning but by veterans who aren’t even 30 years old.
“We’re not signed to a label,” notes Tasha. “So we’ve done everything on our own. We hired a publicist, we manage ourselves …”
And they’ve expanded to a five-piece with the addition of Alex Varon, Cameron Brass and Eric Hoodicoff, who will hit the road upon Tigerlily’s release. This is different from when Lacey and Tasha were 13 and 11 years old, and Tigerlily was an allgirl quartet.
Tigerlily signed to Madonna’s Maverick label and changed its name to Lillix under company pressure. That should have been an omen. Before it tanked, Maverick released two albums by Lillix ( Falling Uphill, Inside the Hollow), which underwent changes of personnel and endured meddling, even threats, from the company.
Left in tatters by 2007, Lillix shut down while Tasha and Lacey went about rebuilding the band. Tigerlily, which is a short nine concise songs, took a year to record, during which the two women not only expanded their musicianship but learned about sound engineering. Rather than a raw, back-to-the-basics record, it’s polished, even slick, which masks some of its hurt and lessons learned.
That shouldn’t be too surprising. Even though the two had to overcome the old prejudices faced by allgirl groups, as well as the suspicion that any group so young had to lack credibility, Tasha (now 25) and Lacey (27) had toured, achieved a gold record in Japan, placed a song on the Freaky Friday soundtrack and notched a few Juno nominations.
Tigerlily, then, is not the work of a band back at the drawing board, but more along the way. They know what a record should sound like and also know the tough road ahead of them.
“We’ve been in a band since 1997,” exclaims Lacey. “We can’t just stop.”
“It’s been up and down like a roller-coaster,” Tasha observes. “One day you’re down, the next you’re go-go-go.
“There’s no pressure now,” she continues. “We can do what we want.”
“I think a key to our band is the voices, being sisters,” figures Lacey.
“It’s pop music,” Tasha adds. “It’s pop. When we were younger we were a little ashamed of that.”
Now they want to prove themselves. They’ve come a long way from working with The Matrix (which also wrote most of the first Avril Lavigne album) to writing solely on their own while learning to handle their business affairs. Making Tigerlily has forced Tasha and Lacey to answer some tough questions and rediscover their music.
“We’ve had a lot of doors slammed on us,” Tasha says. “It made us think, ‘We can’t do this!’”
And made them think again that maybe they can.
tharrison@theprovince.com
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