Vinyl Record
Jeremy Dutcher - Motewolonuwok
Jeremy Dutcher - Motewolonuwok on LP vinyl. A 2023 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
LP ยท 2023
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 2023 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Motewolonuwok is Jeremy Dutcher expanding the frame after a debut that had already carried enormous cultural importance. Released in 2023, the album follows Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa not by repeating its exact method, but by asking what comes after recovery, responsibility and recognition. Dutcher moves between Wolastoqey language and English, between inherited song and newly written material, between chamber music, art-pop, ceremonial gravity and queer-Indigenous self-definition. The record opens a larger sonic field. Skicinuwihkuk, Pomawsuwinuwok Wonakiyawolotuwok and Take My Hand establish a language of voice, piano, orchestration and collective breath, while Ancestors Too Young and The Land That Held Them deepen the album's meditation on grief, lineage and care. The arrangements are more expansive than the debut's stark archival encounter, but they do not lose the central force of Dutcher's voice. He sings with operatic command, yet the emotional effect is often intimate: a reaching outward that still feels grounded in kinship. What makes Motewolonuwok important is its refusal to let Dutcher be fixed as only a guardian of the past. The album insists on continuity as a living practice. It honours ancestors, but it also writes forward; it protects language, but it also lets language change the shape of modern song. The result is a second album with uncommon stakes: beautiful as music, serious as cultural work, and generous in the way it imagines survival as emergence rather than preservation alone.
Motewolonuwok matters because it confirmed Jeremy Dutcher's artistry beyond the breakthrough narrative of his debut. Its 2024 Polaris Music Prize win made him the first two-time winner of that award, but the deeper significance is musical: Dutcher found a way to expand his language, ensemble scale and songwriting without weakening the cultural centre of the work.
For collectors, Motewolonuwok is essential if Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa is already on the shelf. It documents the next chapter: more original writing, more bilingual movement, wider arrangements and a stronger sense of Dutcher as a composer shaping the present. It is especially meaningful for collections focused on Indigenous music, modern classical crossover, art-pop and albums where beauty carries responsibility.
Expansive chamber-pop and First Nations art song with operatic voice, piano, orchestral glow, bilingual lyrics and a solemn but luminous emotional arc.
Recommended for: Jeremy Dutcher listeners following the second-album expansion; Collectors of Indigenous, art-pop and modern classical crossover records; Fans of voice-led albums with cultural depth and orchestral scale.
What year was Motewolonuwok released? Motewolonuwok was released in 2023. How does Motewolonuwok differ from Dutcher's debut? It includes more newly written material and moves between Wolastoqey language and English while keeping Dutcher's voice and cultural purpose at the centre. Why is Motewolonuwok historically notable? It won the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, making Jeremy Dutcher the first artist to win that prize twice.