Featured San Diego LGBT Pride recording artists, The Cliks are many things to many people – but the Canadian indie band is about one thing more than any other – passionate, inspiring rock music.
“I’m certainly influenced by the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, a lot of soul music and Michael Jackson,” says The Cliks front man, Lucas Silveira, speaking by phone from Vancouver. He adds that he’s also inspired musically by The Black Keys and Beyonce.
The fact that Silveira and his bandmates are hyper-talented musicians is the reason the group draws large crowds, sells downloads and drives YouTube traffic, according to critics.
The fact that the band’s lead vocalist is a dashing transgender man only matters to a fraction of their fans, according to Silveira. But if among those fans are trans youths who feel good about loving the music and performances of an individual to whom they can relate regarding gender identity or gender expression – well, that’s a big bonus.
But ultimately, he says, everything is about the music.
“I started playing music as a young, 18-year-old lesbian woman,” says Silveira. “It’s crazy, how things have turned out. I thought when I decided to become a trans man that my musical career would end. I thought, ‘well, that was fun.’”
That was circa 2008. But by then the band, formed in 2004, had been signed by Warner Bros. Records in Canada and Tommy Boy Records in the U.S. They were, by any reasonable account, a successful rock band.
However, authenticity in his personal life called out to Silveira even more loudly than did his ambition for success in the notoriously difficult music industry – an industry where he was already on a trajectory to beat the odds and make it big.
“Something strange happened,” he says. “Instead of it hurting the band’s success, it may even have helped a little thanks to the mainstream media kind of sensationalizing the whole transgender thing.”
That’s not to say all was smooth sailing as he made his transition from his birth-assigned gender to his natural gender-expression and identity. The first signs of discord among The Cliks’ universe of fans came from the “L” in LGBT.
“At first, I was really hurt that our lesbian fans started falling by the wayside,” Silveira recalls. “It was disappointing to see that because we were no longer an all-girl band that a lot of our lesbian fans stopped coming to shows. I guess it mattered more to them than the music.”
Silveira is quick to note that many lesbians still turn out for and love the music of The Cliks. Still, he says, there was a backlash against the band among a noticeable portion of the band’s lesbian fan base.
“A lot of music comes from heartache,” says Silveira, who jokes that his successful relationship with a woman he’s madly in love with makes it harder to write songs.
Ironically, the experience of feeling abandoned by what he thought was The Cliks’ loyal fan base supplied Silveira more heartache and therefore more songwriting material than did his love life.
He saw what happened with some fans as an opportunity to grow and evolve both musically and personally. While it hurt, he told San Diego LGBT Weekly that he and the band have moved forward.
“The younger LGBT generation is more accepting of gender identity and gender expression,” he says, noting that while his gender identity is that of a trans male, his sexual orientation is queer. Queerness, Silveira says, leaves the door open for him to love – now, get this crazy idea – whomever he falls in love with.
Music critic Thomas Nassiff has called The Cliks’ song-making “volatile” and “catchy.” Decidedly guitar-driven rock, Silveira and the girls – and yes, this is a band with the uncommon configuration of a male lead singer backed by female instrumentalists and back-up vocalists – manage to deliver a sound that is at once post-modern and post-punk.
In fact, it’s not a stretch to say your iPod will feel quite comfy with The Cliks’ “Runaway” tucked in between Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” and Ariana Grande’s “Problem.”
In a famously sexualized review, Toronto’s NOW magazine music critic, Sarah Liss said this of The Cliks’ sound: “(It’s) what might happen if Chrissie Hynde and the Murmurs’ Leisha Hailey fell in love, got Bowie to help out with insemination and gave birth to an indie rock love child.”
To develop your own impression of The Cliks’ vibe and to see the handsome and talented Lucas Silveira in person, don’t miss the band at San Diego LGBT Pride, Saturday, July 19 on the Stonewall Main Stage from 1:45-2:45 p.m.
Silveira says he cannot wait to be in America’s Finest City for Pride.
“I totally love that place,” he said during our interview. “No, I mean really, really love San Diego.” For more on The Cliks visit thecliks.com
