The Cliks singer discusses album cover

Lucas Silviera, the singer for alternative rock band The Cliks, answered questions about transistioning from female to male and the meaning behind the group’s latest album cover in an interview on The New Gay blog today.

LS: I hate to dwell too much on your album art, but I thought the cover image was very brave. Was exposing your chest scars your decision?

TNG: Completely my decision. The publicist was very adamant about it; they were very wary of the situation. Even my band members were wary and thought that it was not the best idea, but when people tell me not to do something that’s when I want to do it even more. It’s not that the label wasn’t supportive. They were worried. I’d have to fight a lot, I think that a lot of people didn’t understand what I was trying to express in doing that. People read into stuff about me trying to be a big trans poster boy. To me it was about exposing myself as a human being, and I thought that that was the best format to do it. In my opinion, an album cover shouldn’t just be a band standing there with fucking guitars looking stupid. The purpose of creating music is to connect to people and create art. If you can’t evoke emotion with the cover, no one will go into it. It’s like a book. It’s such a valuable medium to have this visual attached to something that is sonic. The death of the album cover is sad. I remember looking through the cover of [Pink Floyd’s] The Wall, and being so connected to the imagery through the music. I’m glad i fought for it. Now it’s not just an album cover, it’s a beautiful piece of art.

Read the entire interview…

Here is music video for The Cliks title track, Dirty King: