Much like the lyrics in her song “Black Eye,” fans of Allie X will get hit with “that super bass” when the Canadian pop singer comes to Cambridge for a sold-out show Monday night.
“You can expect something kind of goth-y, moody and it’s what I think really comes across in this record [which] is this sort of rebellious punk spirit,” the musician said.
Allie X, who’s real name is Alexandra Hughes, will bring her “Girl With No Face Tour” to the Sinclair in Cambridge on Monday, June 10. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show is scheduled to start at 8 p.m.
The tour is in support of Hughes’ latest album, also called “Girl With No Face.” While speaking with MassLive in May, Hughes said she will be “blasting the guitar” and “letting her rip” on stage while she performs songs from the album as well as some of her past hits.
As a first-time endeavor, Hughes has no drums on this tour. The musician said this “really works for this record because all the drums are very on the grid and programmed,” and that live drums “would actually just take away from the sound that I want, which is machine drums.”
Hughes also said there will be “all gals” on stage with her, adding her show will be “a rockin’ good time.”
“Girl With No Face” artwork.Marcus Cooper
The singer told MassLive back in May that ticket sales for the tour have been “better than ever before” and that her most recent record “translates super well live, more so than my previous records.” This is also Hughes’ first headlining tour in two years.
In addition, “Girl With No Face” is Hughes’ first album since 2020′s “Cape God” as well as her first self-produced album. The musician said creating the album “was a completely different process than anything I’d done before,” adding that lacking collaborators was the biggest hurdle she faced while making the album.
“When you’re co-writing with different writers and you’ve got a producer in the room, there’s this sort of like, chemical reaction that happens,” she explained. “It just sort of creates this feedback loop and things get written really fast and you give each other confidence that your ideas are good.”
“When you’re lacking collaborators, it can be very daunting and very sort of like you can get kind of insecure, so my whole process was that and it was wearing so many hats,” Hughes added.
After acquiring new skills that are typically done by a sound engineer or producer, Hughes has had her fill of doing everything herself.
“It was madness,” she said with a chuckle. “I can’t do that again.”
However, she doesn’t regret it one bit.
“I have a really high pain threshold and I’ll really push myself to experience certain things because I know that it’s good for my growth and I know that on my deathbed, I’ll be glad that I did it,” Hughes said.
Hughes completely strayed away from modern pop while creating this record.
As evident in the album’s sound, she gravitated toward music and artists from the late 1980s as well as bands who helped usher in the post-punk era like Madonna, Kate Bush, Joy Division, New Order and Kraftwerk.
While Hughes has always slightly toyed with this sound in her past works, this time around she wanted to fully create a record that reflected the music she had been listening to.
“After sort of living in a very hyper-tuned, super pop space I started to crave something completely different,” Hughes said. “The spirit and the attitude of that time and of that music and all the stories behind it and all the gear behind it became really inspirational to me.”
The first single released off “Girl With No Face” was “Black Eye,” which came out Oct. 13, 2023.
Hughes said the song was the best of re-introducing people back into her world and music after taking some time off for a few years.
“‘Black Eye’ was sonically really strong,” Hughes said. “The mood of it really, I thought, represented the record as a whole and also I had the idea for that music video early on. So, because I wanted to start with a song that had a music video, I thought that also made sense.”
She then dropped “Off With Her Tits” as the second single of “Girl With No Face” on Jan. 18, 2024.
While Hughes said she’s always loved “Off With Her Tits” as a single, she felt that it was too aggressive to be released as the lead single.
“Off With Her Tits” artwork.Marcus Cooper
“I thought it was better to sort of, instead of slapping people in the face, like easing them into it,” she said about the process for releasing singles.
The 11-track “Girl With No Face” would eventually come out on Feb. 23, 2024 and Hughes announced the album’s accompanying tour shortly after. The musician said the reception to the record has been mostly positive, with many fans calling it her best work yet.
“I have a 10-year career behind me now and so a lot of my fans really have followed my whole journey, and it means a lot that they would say that about this record,” Hughes said. “I’m very fortunate to have fans that let me evolve and don’t really get too stuck on any one sound.”
So far the “Girl With No Face Tour” has made stops in Ireland, The United Kingdom and Chicago, Illinois.
Once Hughes wraps up her Boston show, the singer will head out to New York City, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, San Francisco, California and Los Angeles, California. Tickets for the Boston show can be found online.
