SG Lewis: AudioLust & HigherLove Album Review

Play any song from SG Lewis’s second album, AudioLust & HigherLove, and you’ll wonder where you’ve heard it before. A Target or TGI Fridays? Maybe it was a Spotify-curated playlist called “Good Vibes” or “Happy Beats.” You’ve heard that four-on-the-floor drum pattern with the shimmery synth lead at least a thousand times, even if you can’t quite pinpoint where (but probably on a decade-old Daft Punk or Disclosure song). The 28-year-old British producer and songwriter’s wholesome blend of disco and dance music feels designed to soundtrack summer parties and moments when one might unironically mutter, “My life is a movie.” Like the rest of Lewis’ catalog, AudioLust & HigherLove is well-executed and loads of fun, but the question lingers: What, if anything, is distinct about his music? 

Despite operating within a familiar pastiche, Lewis is more than just a great impressionist. He has produced for Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, and Elton John, and his solo work sounds like a successor to Random Access Memories, a collage of squeaky-clean disco, house, and prog-pop that fuses live and electronic instruments. On his 2021 debut, times, he captured a glittery, strobing dancefloor ethos, rotating through a cast of glamorous hooks that hinted tonight might just be the night. It was schmaltzy and sometimes airless, but Lewis’ shrewd, pristine production compensated for the lack of conceptual ingenuity. Even so, times often sounded like the work of a producer still forming an identity, a devotee of Daft Punk and Pharrell reluctant to color too far outside the lines.

AudioLust & HigherLove is bigger, brighter, and more confident than times, its highs higher and its lows less gimmicky. The songs are glossy and anthemic, stuffed with vivid, cinematic details: side-chained vocals, live orchestral arrangements, kick drums so beefy they knock through an iPhone speaker. “Infatuation” and “Something About Your Love” highlight Lewis’ talent for crafting emotive, funk-flecked bangers; he’s a wizard at merging EDM build-ups with ’80s R&B rhythms. Both of these songs feature Lewis as lead vocalist, a welcome wrinkle for an artist who previously confessed a lack of confidence in his voice. On some songs, like “Another Life” and “Honest,” it’s obvious he’s still nurturing that confidence; his rigid, plainspoken melodies sound like placeholders for a more assured singer. But then there are the choruses on “Oh Laura” and “Missing You,” where he extends his range and lands on a pair of striking melodies, proving he’s capable of anchoring an arena-sized pop song on his own.

Lewis’ singing is one of the few novelties on AudioLust & HigherLove. The rest is all breezy grooves and cabana jams, frictionless and blemish-free. By the time “Plain Sailing” arrives more than halfway through the album, we’re already intimately familiar with the phaser-laden pre-chorus, the syrupy stacked synths, the processed vocals coated in a pleasantly dull sheen. Lewis’ writing, which evokes summer breezes and romantic flings, is as memorable as your fourth drink of the night.

Lewis describes AudioLust & HigherLove as a concept record in two acts: “AudioLust is the darker, lusty, infatuated, short-lived, and ego-driven version of love,” he explains in a press release. “The second half represents a much deeper, actualized, and fulfilled version of love.” But these themes—the lifeblood of mainstream pop music—are rendered so generically that they bear little consequence. Yes, Tove Lo revels in the “sweat drip[ping] down your naked chest” on early album cut “Call on Me,” and later, on “Vibe Like This,” Lucky Daye admits that he’s “never felt a vibe like this/Might be worth the risk.” The sentiment is nice, but the vibe is endlessly replaceable.