As D.C. soul-punk band Lightmare pumps itself up for its final performance this weekend, they can’t help but remember their first official gig at Looking Glass Lounge in 2017.
The bar wasn’t a venue yet, but lead singer Shady Rose managed to convince the owner to let them put on a show with three other bands. In preparation for the performance, the band cleared some of the tables from the restaurant and set up their amps, microphones and other equipment directly on the floor. Keys player and backing vocalist Vitamin Dee recalled being nervous about that night.
“I had trouble even looking up from my keyboard,” she says.
But it was a success. In that dark, narrow bar littered with chandeliers, old paintings, and many mirrors, Rose says that 100 people crowded inside, matching the new band’s excitement.
“We’re a hell of a lot better now than we were back then, but we were pretty good then,” Dee says. “We were never a mediocre band.”
The band has become more experienced since then: they’ve released two albums, performed in venues like DC9 Nightclub and Pie Shop, and even snagged a Washington Post feature. But now Lightmare is breaking up, and their farewell performance is scheduled Saturday at The Pocket.
The band members say burnout is the main cause — their output has slowed and their motivation has faded.
“We’ve been a band for almost six years and we’re just looking to take a rest and to expand into different types of music and other projects,” Rose says.
“You can’t smother something and expect it to thrive,” saxophone player Matt Kirkland added. “This is a chance for everybody to grow.”
With close to 1,500 followers on Instagram and over 2,000 streams on several of their songs on Spotify, Lightmare is leaving a small yet dedicated fanbase.
Kirkland says that for the past couple weeks he’s been reflecting on a show at Gallery5 in Richmond where the band was passing out homemade Valentine’s Day cards. The band still sees fans talk about that night years later, like in this tweet from February where someone mentioned the card they received meant a lot to them while they were “truly down in the dumps” and a response during a recent livestream that said the cards remind them every day to love themselves.
“A lot of folks are pretty sad to see Lightmare go,” Rose says. “So we’re calling it ‘ta-ta’ for now.”
Kirkland says the band’s sound is genre-bending, including elements of alt-rock and indie rock while also bridging other genres. The band members use the term “soul-punk,” which Rose says is because they combine the heartfulness of soul with the anger and righteousness of punk.
“It’s just the way that we tread the line between softness and hardness… high energy and thoughtful,” Rose says.
I saw Lightmare once when they performed at the burger joint Slash Run in March. It was an amazing concert and they aren’t lying about their music being both high energy and meaningful. Songs like “Fool @ the Farmer’s Market” are easy to dance to as you become lost in the beautiful tune, while others like “Kill the Butcher” have lyrics (“I will not lie down, lie down / and die for you, die for you”) that force the listener to confront issues of sexual assault. Band members don’t remain stiff onstage and it’s likely they’ll be dancing along with you to the music during the whole set.
Lightmare formed in 2017 through the annual Hat Band project in D.C., an event in which people fill out an online form and are assigned randomly to each other to form a band. The Hat Band experience lasted a couple of months and the proceeds of the final performance by all the randomized bands benefitted the music education group Girls Rock! DC, where Rose now works as a co-executive director.
While a rotating cast of characters played guitar, bass and drums, the original band members, Rose, Dee and Kirkland remained together through it all.
Lightmare has released two albums during their time together: Dream Glitch in 2018 and Dirt in 2021.
Dream Glitch (an anagram of Lightmare DC), was released after Rose says the band had an explosion of creative ideas, recording the entire album in just two days. Their Hat Band origin and eclectic backgrounds — Kirkland started out playing classical music and Rose’s origin is in choral singing — explains the variety of songs on the album, according to Dee.
“We have a habit of just cramming a lot of work into a short amount of time,” Rose says.
“That’s probably the punk,” Dee added.
Dee explained that Dirt, their second album, was written in the same improvisational way as the first. However, there was a more intentional through line — it was meant to be a reflection of how rapidly society was changing during the pandemic.
“We all were deeply affected by all the things that were going on at that time,” Rose says. “So a lot of the lyrics are about justice issues: racial justice, interpersonal justice issues, community justice.”
“It was inevitable for us to be making art reflecting these issues that are so important to us,” they added.
The criticism of injustice is most apparent in songs like “All Cats are Beautiful,” in which Rose sings these lyrics: “Well, who gave you the license to kill? / We’re not living if we’re living in fear.”
The band members of Lightmare are active about fighting injustice outside of their music as well. Recently Rose helped organize a community discussion called Coffee Not Cops held at Lost City Books, where they work as an events manager. There people talked about the mistreatment of unhoused people in D.C. and alternative solutions to community safety other than calling the police.
“Different members of Lightmare have different ways that they’re involved in justice issues, but we are all involved,” Rose says. “It’s something we all really strongly believe in and in a way we’re always representing each other when we go out into the world and do this kind of work.”
Rose says that although Dirt is an urgent call-to-action and a reflection of justice issues, they noticed many of the people who’ve listened to the album had very unique interpretations. Some Rose has heard involved topics like police violence, but the most memorable belongs to a friend of theirs which focused on reading Dirt as a concept album being all about climate change, based on lyrics like: “But some time ago I learned the earth will go on living. / We burn our kingdoms down but the soil is forgiving,” from “Our Apocalypse,” the last song on Dirt.
“It kind of shows how issues overlap,” Kirkland says. “There’s certain songs about interpersonal violence that people can read as colonial violence or state violence… but it’s not so vague that anybody can make it about anything.”
Rose mentioned a quote from a review published by Everything Is Noise that summed up what Lightmare is trying to do. It said that there will be parties after the revolution, and it’s “hard to believe Lightmare won’t be the headliner for most of them after hearing Dirt.”
Lightmare released Dirt on Oct. 29, 2021, and they’ve timed their goodbye to the one-year anniversary. The band members are calling Lightmare’s end more of a “wind-down” rather than a breakup as they intend to still be active in the music scene. Dee is already putting together a new musical project that might be more straightword punk and riot grrrl while Kirkland is working on a project that’s “heavier and weird” compared to Lightmare. Dee says she’s looking forward to being interviewed in any future documentaries that are made about her bandmates when they blow up and start movements.
“My money is on Shady,” Dee says.
Despite the desire to move on to other projects, the band members of Lightmare expressed an appreciation for the time they’ve spent together.
“It’s all love,” Dee says. “There’s no drama.”
“I made some of the best friends of my life in this band,” Rose adds. “And to see whatever is next for all of us… it’s gonna be fan-fucking-tastic.”
