Allie X keeps going her own way

Oakville native didn't like how the music industry works, so she decided to do something else

- NICK KREWEN

"For me, this is an album about liberation and really trying something that I'd never tried before: trusting my own instincts, trusting that I could do something that came completely from me," Allie X says of her new album "Girl With No Face."

With “Girl With No Face,” Allie Hughes — known to the music word as Allie X — is taking back the reins.

Not that the Oakville native was necessarily relinquishing a lot of control with her previous two albums of immaculate pop perfection — 2017’s “CollXtion II” or 2020’s “Cape God,” or even the numerous EPs that have come before or in between — but she felt it was time to invest in her most valuable asset: herself.

Which is why “Girl With No Face,” recorded in analogue, is almost entirely self-produced and took a while to come to fruition.

“For me, this is an album about liberation and really trying something that I’d never tried before: trusting my own instincts, trusting that I could do something that came completely from me,” said Hughes, who performs Saturday at the Opera House.

“I had never made a whole record before. I’d been on a couch in the back of the room saying, ‘Hey, move this around or make this sound like this.’ But when you’re actually the one on the computer by yourself … it’s a very steep learning curve.”

There were other delays, including a hospitalization to deal with an autoimmune disease that kept her out of commission for six months but, in the end, X marked her musical spots with the same traits present in every Allie X project: an insanely ingenious knack for infectious melodies, cunning lyrics and an almost supernatural pop sensibility, as well as topical themes of anonymity and identity that speak to the disenfranchised among us, well represented in such songs as “Weird World,” “Off With Her Tits” and “Black Eye.”