Lutalo has shared new single “Summit Hill,” the track arrives ahead of their forthcoming debut album The Academy. “Summit Hill,” represents where Lutalo comes from and the spaces they’ve inhabited, a highly personalized analysis of the ever-hopeful yet often alienating American Dream. The Academy is due on September 20 via Winspear, the artist will also be hitting the road the road for a with Nilüfer Yana this fall for a run of North American tour dates.

Summit Hill is the neighborhood in which the actual Academy –– the boarding school Lutalo attended on scholarship, the very same that F. Scott Fitzgerald attended -–– is located. Of “Summit Hill,” Lutalo says, “My best friend and I often walked that neighborhood in our childhood admiring the homes, as a dream that someday we’d be able to live in something as grand. We both grew up in low income households, yet both were accepted into one of the most expensive schools in the state on scholarship. His parents were both immigrants from Brazil, his father was a home painter. Most of his work was in that area for those [wealthier] people.” Just as in The Great Gatsby, “we were experiencing the same longing of acceptance, into a world of ease. Along with memories of a time where we had less responsibility, this song is about growing up with a heavy juxtaposition of lifestyles. And waiting for our time to be comfortable as well. Very typical American dream concept, personalized.”

Playing every instrument on The Academy, Lutalo crafts an album that serves as a potent backdrop to their literarily assembled character sketches and personal reckonings. Throughout, Lutalo’s exhibits an earnest and unsentimental curiosity about the world, dredging up empathy for anyone navigating their way through it.

Named after the St. Paul, MN school they attended on scholarship — the same school F. Scott Fitzgerald attended and famously dissected throughout his work — The Academy marks a period of re-invigoration and self-actualization for Lutalo. Diverging from the gentler sounds of last year’s AGAIN EP or their collab with  Claud on “Running” from earlier this year, The Academy is an altogether knottier and bloodier affair that traverses down fresh sonic avenues while maintaining Lutalo’s idiosyncratic voice. What results is a beguiling and visceral amalgam of rock, folk, post-punk, and soul paired with nuanced and humanizing observations on class disparity, privilege, and more informed by their time as an interloper into the elite world of The Academy.

Lutalo
The Academy
Winspear records
Tracklisting

Summit Hill
Ganon
Ocean Swallows Him Whole
Broken Twin
Big Brother
Caster
3
Oh Well
About (Hall of Egress)
Haha Halo
Lightning Strike
The Bed

Lutalo 2024 Tour Dates

09/19/24 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue ^
09/28/24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts +
09/30/24 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat +
10/01/24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel +
10/02/24 – Boston, MA @ Royale +
10/04/24 – Montreal, QC @ La Tulipe +
10/05/24 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre +
10/06/24 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop +
10/07/24 – Chicago, IL @ Metro +
10/09/24 – Nashville, TN @ Basement East +
10/10/24 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle +
10/11/24 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West +
10/13/24 – Lawrence, KS @ Bottleneck +
10/15/24 – Denver, CO @ Meow Wolf +
10/16/24 – Salt Lake City, UT @ State Room +
10/18/24 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre +
10/19/24 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile +
10/20/24 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom +
10/22/24 – San Francisco, CA @ August Hall +
10/24/24 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda +

^ w/ hippo campus
+ w/ Nilüfer Yanya

Pre-order The Academy by Lutalo HERE