Toronto’s Pleasure Craft have been steadily building momentum with a string of singles and EPs that highlight the skillful versatility of mastermind Sam Lewis to blend and adapt disparate styles into complex, but approachable, musical expressions that run the gamut from sunny psychedelia to shadowy indie-industrial. Inhabiting the darker end of Pleasure Craft’s musical spectrum, “Don’t Need A Knife” swaggers with mechanical precision and sinister confidence that sets the stage for a wider conceptual composition coming in 2022.
Blending the kind of hooky industrial sensibilities that made Nine Inch Nails a household name in the mid-1990s with the flat, robotic delivery of early-career Gary Numan, “Don’t Need A Knife” aggregates decades of genre development into a 21st century industrial revolution that is reverently referential while remaining refreshingly modern. Drum and synth loops bounce around like rubber balls in a stainless-steel air duct, erratic but tightly contained producing a metallic vibration that’s wonderfully unnerving. Chunky guitars saturated in digital effects plow through the chorus with a bullish deliberateness, clearing a path for surprisingly bright harmonies courtesy of Lewis’ longtime collaborator Mingjia Chen to coexist in the chaos like brilliant sparks flashing forth from the gnashing jaws of unrelenting machinery. The resulting dichotomy recalls the stylish eloquence of How To Destroy Angels, with Chen’s contributions adding a chillingly sharp edge to Lewis’ muscular delivery that darts about like shards of mirrored glass caught in a dervish.
Employing visual techniques that owe a debt to Mark Romanek’s monumental video for Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” Toronto director Shawn Kosmo conjures “Don’t Need A Knife” into existence with a potent alchemical combination of glitchy, high contrast footage that channels the track’s nervous energy through the use of inventive camera angles and bold lighting techniques. Tight shots amp up the drama, camera twisting and pivoting to emphasize the brooding physicality of Lewis’ performance juxtaposed with Chen’s lithe malleability amidst set pieces splashed with shadow and tumbling with disorderly shapes and deteriorating textures. The result is a dexterously DIY take on hyper-produced MTV-ready mini-films that is no less effective at conveying the imposing atmospherics of its big budget brethren while reveling in the freedom to create without expectations.
Pleasure Craft’s upcoming full-length LP is structured as a three-act concept album that follows a narrative arc spanning a wide range of emotional exploration from the confrontational to more introspective tracks that will complete a conflicted protagonist’s journey of self-discovery. If “Don’t Need A Knife” is any indication, the final result is guaranteed to be a thrilling suite of songs that truly showcase Pleasure Craft’s range and versatility.
“Don’t Need A Knife” is out now. Keep up with Pleasure Craft on Instagram.
