It started with a want ad, plastered across the board of a post-industrial space near the Gowanus Canal. The request? Quite simple: “Robert Smith/Emily Haines, where are you?” The kind of thing you’d expect from a New Mexico native who studied the Cure’s bleak but beautiful hooks at a time when riff-raking guitar heroes were all the rage. “People would always say, ‘Why would you want to play like Robert Smith?’” explains Lightouts founder Gavin Rhodes, last heard in the one-man band Honeypower. “‘Wouldn’t you rather learn how to shred instead?”

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