Mid 2010s emo-pop icon Lights took to New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on Thursday night, greeting a crowd that had only mere hours before snaked around the block with her signature electro-pop sound.

The last time I saw Lights, I was fourteen and watching in near rapt attention as she threw vats of colored paint across blank walls in the “Second Go” music video. I was in a weird place at the time, as many teen girls are: I both hated, and so desperately wanted to be, any woman in proximity to the Warped Tour scene I was so obsessed with. Part of me wanted to be dismissive of her, brushing it off as “ugh, pop music” but I found myself drawn back to her tracks time and time again. “Second Go,” and the rest of its album The Listening, would become a frequent visitor to my Most Replayed playlist, something I found myself turning back to whenever that weird feeling of not belonging came back. 

Seeing Lights again now, at twenty-nine years old, feels strange. There’s a near visceral reaction to hearing “Siberia” again, still in flat soled Converse high tops but now old enough to regret it the next day. In a brief moment, I feel fourteen again, standing awkwardly in a crowd I’m not sure really wants me there. 

But things are different. Rather than the iconic swooping, eye-covering bangs that adorned the cover of The Listening, her hair is a shoulder length blonde bob. Mine is dyed the vibrant red I was always too afraid to do as a teen. Less hiding, more shining on both of our parts. Time, it seems, has seen us both change.

Lights has definitely grown as an artist, exploring different sounds while still retaining her classic electronic sound, though the keytar has been lost to time and various moving companies. Opening with tracks from recent album A6 like “DAMAGE” and “WHITE PAPER PALM TREES” Lights kindly reminds fans exactly where the electronic indie pop sound was so pervasive over the last decade began. It’s a fun show, dance-y when it needs to be and somber when it needs to be. It hits all the right notes, both high and low, and plays out in an artistic array of vibrant lights.

It’s a big time for emo-era nostalgia, with the Warped Tour revival and annual When We Were Young Fest in Vegas. But Lights’ tour isn’t a nostalgia-grab, reaching out to aging emos looking to feel young again. It’s an arms-open embrace, welcoming in fans both old and new to a modern, evolved Lights.