Walls, Mirrors, and Windows, the debut LP from Toronto’s Pleasure Craft, is a conceptual work of pulsing, dark post-pop and sharp, gothic new-wave. It builds on the sonic and thematic worlds that multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Sam Lewis has been crafting over five years and two prior EPs. It is volatile and razor-sharp, ominous and grimey beneath thick, industrial grooves, buzzsaw guitar riffing, tectonic synth palettes, and gorgeous vocals.
The record is divided into three acts that correspond to the record’s title, sectioning off a nameless protagonist’s narrative arc. In the first, introduced by opening dreamscape “Walls,” he’s aggressive, defensive, and bristling with brittle confidence, soundtracked by tense, machinic synths and guitars. In Mirrors, the second, psychedelic movement, he’s introspective and reflective, overcome by isolation and attempting to untie the stranglehold of suppression; the palette turns darker and weirder here, dipping into surreal soundscapes and dense, pulsing atmospherics. In the third, after lowering to rock-bottom and dissolving the ego, he reclaims genuine connection to others and his own self-expression in Windows, escaping the weight of the previous two acts.
The three-act record, punctuated in each chapter by shifting production palettes, is the culmination of a conversation that Lewis has carried across Pleasure Craft’s releases with equal parts wit and gravity, through sneering drawls and belting howls: what are the consequences of the dominant cultural constructs of manhood and masculinity, and how do we unstitch the violence sewn and socialized into people raised under those constructs? Which parts of the self are performance, and which are real? What do we hold onto, and what do we dismantle? In Lewis’ work, this dominant culture of absolutes hurts all that it touches, including the aggressor. Healing these damages is a moral and existential imperative.
Part-autobiography and part-fiction, Walls, Mirrors, and Windows narrates a character’s difficult journey through these questions, suffering under the weight of them before a painful, life- changing metamorphosis. Lewis has crafted these shifts with care and detail: the opening third relates tales in first-person before switching to third-person to signify a relinquishing of the self.
“In the first act, there’s so much bravado and sarcasm and acting and projecting this big character,” says Lewis. “By the end, the last three songs are so earnest and sincere. It’s the stripping away of all this made-up illusion, and just seeing the truth.”
On Walls, Mirrors, and Windows, Lewis also cements a creative process and working style that have become the aesthetic backbone of Pleasure Craft’s delicious, idiosyncratic indie-pop-noir. Lewis wrote and arranged the music before recording bed tracks at his Toronto apartment, then shared these with collaborators Mingjia Chen (backing vocals), Ben Green (drums), and River Radcliffe (guitars), who each recorded their parts from home. Lewis’ former roommate Andrew Feels handled mixing on 10 of the 12 tracks, while Phil Bova mastered them. The result is a record with a singular vision and a multitude of musical pedigrees: it churns between new wave, alt-pop, electronic, and indie rock with punkish sarcasm, Bowie-ish curiosity, and staggering technical precision.
After the stage-setting synths of “Walls,” the record bursts into lead single “Bag Down.” Across the track, vocalist Sam Lewis croons over serrated, fluorescent guitars, a fog of synths, and ghostly vocals from collaborator Mingjia Chen. “What I wouldn’t do to be alone again/But all I
ever say is that I got my bag down,” Lewis calls on the chorus. A music video, released last fall, introduced the character found on Walls, Mirrors, and Windows, played by Lewis and clad in “a stereotypical masculine cowboy vibes” fit,” strutting around town with a contorted version of Lewis crushed inside a suitcase.
Second single “Don’t Need a Knife” bounces on Green’s drums and deep, cushiony synths before Chen’s harmonies complicate and colour Lewis’ crystalline, breathy melodies. “Mirrors” introduces the second act in a narcotic, glowing fog before the thumping ‘80s synth-rock of “Silver Green” and the thunderous, metallic blast of third single “Dead Weight,” Pleasure Craft’s most chaotic and brutal composition to date, which benefits from experimentation with aggressive, distorted sampling.
“Windows” announces the closing act, a gentle, lullabye palette bedding Lewis’ tender vocals. Fourth single “Nothing Ever Happens” picks up this cue, with a serene, synth-driven alt-pop strut before closer “Rocki,” a web of ricocheting synths and marching drum machine as Lewis’ voice, subdued and cool, carries the story to its close.
Walls, Mirrors, and Windows is meant to be as enjoyable as it is unsettling. This is where Pleasure Craft lives: on the knife’s edge of calm and chaos, the familiar and the frightening. With this debut LP, Lewis reminds us that these things are not separate or discrete: they are blurred and overlapping, raging inside all of us. The journey of Walls, Mirrors, and Windows isn’t just his, or the protagonist’s; it’s all of ours, too.
- Written by Luke Ottenhof
