For Lutalo, the recording project of Minnesota-born, Vermont-based songwriter Lutalo Jones, music serves a tangibly constructive purpose. “I want to help people question the way they’re living,” as they put it, “so we can create a better reality for us to exist in together.” Following on from 2022 release Once Now, Then Again, Lutalo has returned with AGAIN, a brand new EP on Winspear which continues this mission.
Opener ‘PLPH’ introduces the blend of folk, rock and soul which constitutes the Lutalo sound, as well as the critique of capitalist and racist systems that extends across the release. “I sit inside your pretty little painted house,” go the opening lines, calling out the window dressing on these violent levers of power, and the song ends with a defiant refrain. “I won’t play your game / It’s making me go insane.” With its languid rhythm and grungy attitude, ‘Hold My Head’ is no less evocative, a meditation on addiction that feels like a response to the previous track. A picture of the coping mechanisms required to live in a broken world.
Take my blood
Till I’m bone dry
Give it to me
A bold face lie
Throw my vote
Into the box
Cast me away
An old pair of socks
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The rest of the songs on the release cover a variety of topics, though all circle back to the oppression built into our society. “I’m analysing those systems and patterns, and also asking, ‘Can we continue to not perpetuate this?’” Lutalo explains. “Because it’s hurt a lot of people historically. I’m just asking people to question it.” ‘The Old Cast’ asks to be lifted beyond the fate which seems inevitable, and ‘Push Back Baby’ confronts corporate greed head on, both tracks understated in sound but cutting beneath the surface. ‘Strange Folk’ smoulders with a volatile energy, threatening to spill over, but instead just embraces it own momentum. Closer ‘WAR’ rises from this energised, a call to arms which shakes free from the fuzz of the record and grows confident in its contempt.
Held in paper skin
One just wants to feel care
Torn apart from within
In defiance or despair
To war again
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AGAIN is out now via Winspear and available from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.
