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When Mark William Lewis thinks about his songs, they summon a particular image in his mind. It\u2019s a somber aesthetic \u2014 moody and grayscale, a world slightly warped and drained of color.<\/p>\n
Consider, for example, the photograph that graces the cover<\/a> of his forthcoming album, Mark William Lewis. As soon as he saw the image \u2014 shot last spring by veteran rock photographer Steve Gullick \u2014 \u201cI knew that felt like the world I was trying to describe in my mind\u2019s eye,\u201d Lewis says. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit murky. There\u2019s an uncanniness to it.\u201d<\/p>\n An undeniably cinematic image, it could be a promotional still from some new arthouse horror hit. Which is fitting, because Lewis recently became the first artist the film studio A24 has signed to its nascent record label, A24 Music, outside of a soundtrack context.<\/p>\n Though he may seem like he came out of nowhere, Lewis, a product of South London\u2019s thriving DIY scene, has been working toward this for a long time. An early-30s singer-songwriter with a gruff voice and a knack for writing gloomily impressionistic tunes swathed in reverb and urban malaise, he grew up on a steady diet of poetry and magical-realist literature and sounds a bit like the genre-bending London artist King Krule<\/a>\u2019s harmonica-wielding cousin.<\/p>\n With a shaved head and an oversize black T-shirt, Lewis is soft-spoken and thoughtful, far from the imposing figure who lurks in his dark, haunted press photos. He and I spoke in New York at A24\u2019s library, a high-shelved room that houses hundreds of volumes on cinema.<\/p>\n This is not your first album. I find it interesting when artists put out a self-titled album that\u2019s not their debut. It signals that this is a redefining moment, a reinvention of what their music means. What made you decide to title the record after yourself?\u00a0<\/strong> Your single \u201cTomorrow Is Perfect\u201d is one of your more ambitious compositions, both lyrically and musically. Can you talk about what that song signifies for you?<\/strong> When you write lyrics, do you feel like they come from a more subconscious place for you?<\/strong>
The simple answer is that nothing else felt right. This felt right, firstly. And then I started thinking about what it signifies, which is, like you said, a kind of announcement: This is me; this is my sound. I went to a Philip Guston<\/a> retrospective, and you see at the beginning where he\u2019s younger and he\u2019s kind of copying some people. Then he goes through a phase where he\u2019s trying to find his thing, but it\u2019s not really realized yet. And then you get to the fourth or fifth room and you start seeing the paintings that you know him for. I feel like this album is that room.<\/p>\n
I wanted to build a really rich tapestry of words \u2014 almost like an epic poem. I was trying to conjure a place in my imagination. The words are building this architecture of a place that\u2019s kind of in my imagination but is also grounded in specifically my area, where I live, in Deptford. And I think, in the end, it\u2019s a song where I\u2019m really exploring my emotional and psychological state in the context of the environment where I was living. I suppose I wanted to do a magical-realist portrait of my life.<\/p>\n
Yeah. I think one reason I\u2019m struggling to talk about it is because I think the most inspiring emotions can be the most complicated ones. I also think there\u2019s a beautiful way of writing where it\u2019s just a pure expression of something really, really clear. I suppose what I\u2019ve always been drawn to is an ambiguity. But a powerful ambiguity.<\/p>\n