Joshua Lewis

Joshua Lewis’ career has blossomed from both sides of the studio glass. The Boise, ID multi-instrumentalist has amassed nearly ten years of engineering and production credits with local artists, and in 2021, he ventured into self-recording his debut Too Soft. With its warm gazes back at 1970s pop-rock crooning, the record’s eponymous softness enveloped its tales of heartbreak and longing with halos of inviting melodies and layered instrumentation. For its followup, Lewis strived to challenge his bona fides as a musician by encouraging to a loose, expressive songwriting workflow. “When I knew I wanted to start a new record, I wanted to push myself to go beyond what I was doing in the past. At first I knew I wanted it to be simple, yet have complexity in harmony, to be clean sounding, and to carry an emotional weight,” he explains.

Friction, the end result of this experiment, earns its breezy yet earnest tones from yacht rock. Throughout Lewis’ new set, the core tenets of the genre are offered in spades. Ear-tickling melodies, like the parabolic sway of the vocal on opener “Thinkin’ About You,” guide listeners through crystal-clear production values and a storytelling bent both misty-eyed and microscopic in its detailing. This balancing act of simplicity and shrewd twists in formula stems from Lewis’ love of Steely Dan, masters of this tightrope walk. “You can hear a song that’s so playful or sweet, and they just throw theory around like nobody’s business."