Hanging out in Minneapolis, George Lewis Jr. is keeping a wary—and eager—eye out for any flash of purple. After all, it’s Prince’s hometown, and in a few hours Lewis, the brains behind Twin Shadow, will be playing the Purple One’s home club, First Avenue.

Will there be a sighting?

“I heard he’s around, so you never know,” Lewis tells the Straight over a sketchy cellphone connection. “But he’s elusive.”

Both musician and reporter immediately riff on the idea of an epic guitar battle between the affable Dominican American and the tiny, perfect funk star. Although Lewis largely abandoned his six-string in favour of synths on Twin Shadow’s latest, Eclipse, he has some skill on the instrument. Prince, on the other hand, has been known to channel the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. It would be an uneven contest, and Lewis knows it.

“Believe you me,” he says, laughing, “I’d be shaking in my boots.”

When it comes to songwriting, however, the match would be less clearly weighted in Prince Roger Nelson’s favour. Eclipse is Twin Shadow’s idea of populist pop-soul, and it’s not all that far off from what the Minnesotan has been delivering, with surprising consistency, for the past 35 years.

Buoyed up by slamming drums, insistent bass lines, and immediately gratifying choruses, it seems tailor-made for radio—and a considerable departure from the retro ’80s stylings of Twin Shadow’s previous efforts, Forget and Confess. In fact, much has been made of Lewis’s confession that he wanted to step out of the “elitist” sound of his first two releases and into something with more hit potential. Today, though, the singer and multi-instrumentalist sees his shift in direction as an incremental change rather than a radical break, and one that owes more to his acquisition of studio skills than any abandoning of earlier influences.

“Well, I think I’ve matured a lot as a musician, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot just in terms of technical things, in terms of producing my own records,” he explains. “I’ve learned a lot more about recording music. So there’s this kind of technical aspect: over time, I’ve learned how to do more with less, and I think the album’s a representation of that. And then as a musician it’s more just about—and it’s always been about—evolving emotionally, and being able to translate that into music.”

If there’s a downside to this period of growth, it’s that Lewis has had to put his other passion—writing fiction—on hold. Although he’s already finished his first novel, The Night of the Silver Sun, it probably won’t see the light of day in the immediate future.

“With the novel, I had written it and someone had asked me if they could put an excerpt of it in their zine, the magazine that they were doing, and I gladly gave them this little excerpt,” he says. “But the thing was that I hadn’t intended to publish it, because I have this kind of… I wouldn’t call it a fear but it’s kind of this thing where I want my writing to be looked at separately from my music, and I don’t think that can happen until some time has passed. So I’m really waiting to publish any writing until there’s that shift in my career, whatever that may be—but it’s been coming up a lot, so it makes me wonder.

“In terms of juggling things, though, I’m into the idea of focusing on one art form rather than doing a million things—and I want to focus on music right now,” he adds. “There’s always going to be time to write.”

Twin Shadow plays the Imperial next Friday (April 24).