ILUKA is an Australian-born, LA-based singer/songwriter who recently released her second full-length album via Nettwerk, titled the wild, the innocent, & the raging, which turns on the idea of “beginning again” throughout its 14 rocking tracks. The album stems from ILUKA’s own life experiences uprooting and starting over in the States, but it also casts a much wider net around social constraints, gender taboos, and the layers of things in life that try to tell us who we are.
As a self-defined “witch girl”, ILUKA articulates and pushes back against these assumptions on each of the tracks on this very full album, and delivers high-energy sound along with powerful vocals to back up her message. Rather than generalizing, she draws on mythology, history, and her personal stories to build anthemic responses, often saying things that may not have quite broken through into the public conversation in a way that would be meaningful. As such, these songs are conversation starters and conversation enablers, as well as the authentic experiences of an artist encountering a difficult, but empowering stage of transition in her life.
I spoke to ILUKA about the three-year period that this album encompasses and about the sense of response she has gotten from fans as individual songs have been previewed or released from the wild, the innocent, & the raging.
How far back does the writing go on these new songs for you? Do the songs hail from a particular period of time?
Everything’s been written in the last three years and has kind of reflected my life in that time. But the song “Haunted One” was a song that had been sitting in my demos folder, and at that time, I was still living in Australia, and I’d just been told by various people that if I released a song like this, people in Australia weren’t going to get it. I was told that it wasn’t the kind of song that I should release. So it just sat there for a few years.
When I came out to the US, permanently, in the last three years, I had just gone through a huge breakup, and I’d just left all of my team in Australia. No one over here had any expectations of me, and it felt like this very scary, but freeing place to be in, where I didn’t have to answer to anyone. I could just be whatever I wanted. While I was in that space, I went back through all of my demos and listened to “Haunted One.” I was in a bit of a “dark night of the soul” because my old life had been ripped somewhat violently away from me.
When I heard that song, I felt like it was when life imitates art. I thought, “Oh my God, I was writing this song when I hadn’t been through this chapter yet.” I shared a snippet of that song online, and that was the start of this album, really, because people really responded to that. I think of it as this little message from the universe saying, “Yes!” I always felt like a little witchy girl, but I never felt like I could fully fit in Australia, so sharing this song, which had been written earlier, but was so much what I was going through in that moment, was the beginning of an album. That led to writing “Cry Evil.” It was a beautiful journey, with nothing planned. I started writing “Wings” and it kept going from there.
Something that’s in common between these songs, too, is a big sound.
I’ve always been really drawn to big, theatrical worlds, sonically, and I love cinematic, theatrical music. The more I leaned into that, it just kind of kept rolling, and it was a constant reminder that I was on the right path. Even writing a song like “Hard To Love Me”, which I wrote when I was in Nashville, felt scary to write, because it was too real, but I was showing up authentically. When it came out, I wondered, “Is this too much?” But people connected with it. It’s been a constant idea of showing up in a way that does scare you a little bit.
All of that sounds very brave to me, and I know that sometimes we’re bravest when we don’t have a lot of choice over it.
Totally. That’s true.
The songs that you’re mentioning here are particularly surprising as songs that you were afraid to write because they sound so unafraid. But I am familiar with the phenomenon of writing a batch of songs, and there being one that doesn’t fit, and someday it leads to another album, another sound direction or development. It’s ridiculous that people told you not to release “Haunted One”, though!
I know, I know. But it obviously was meant to have its own time and its own moment. But it was so silly.
I was literally thinking, when I heard “Hard To Love Me”, how hard it must have been to write. And also to perform! You also really draw a lot on mythology and history, and really pack that into the lyrics, so you’re referring to things that people can relate to. You must spend a lot of time writing these songs.
Oh, yes, I’m insane. Recently, for the song “Crucify Me”, I went back to the original document that I was writing it in, and it was 21 pages! I am notoriously insane when it comes to lyrics, particularly verses, because I always have so much to say. These songs I could happily make ten-minute songs, and still have stuff I want to say.
I work in a way that I throw it all down on the page, and then I start pulling from history and mythology, and putting it all into the document. I reference books, and write lists, and from the outside, it would seem a little tedious. I definitely don’t write these lyrics, and they just come out like that. With every line, I have to get so much of what I want to say into one line, it’s all very painstaking. With “Crucify Me”, I just had so much to say that I worked line by line. Particularly with this album, it was hard choosing, since I write a lot of songs, as well.
And this is a big album! There are a lot of songs on this. Sometimes with a big album, that suggests that there were even more that didn’t make the cut this time. And many of them are very high energy, though there is some variation in sound. I was thinking of theater and cinema music, too, listening to the album, and maybe a big sound is necessary to carry these ideas.
Oh God, yes. I think it comes back to the feeling that the album was born from, the intensity of totally starting anew. There was fieriness. There was a big feeling that is the foundation of this record, so I think being born from this incredibly difficult, but freeing, and celebratory time needed that sound. I knew from the outset that the record that I had a lot to say, and it needed to feel vast.
When was the time when you realized that an album was on the horizon? It sounds like you gave yourself some unstructured time at first.
It didn’t happen until a little bit later. Basically, there wasn’t a plan to make it an album. It was potentially going to be an EP, but the more I kept writing and delving into these ideas, the more obvious it became. I’m such an album girl, and I’m into listening to albums at certain turning points I my life, and I love listening to an album from front to back.
I think because all the songs were so grand in their idea and scope, it felt like I needed to bring it all into this one thing. I almost feel that I’m tying a chapter up with releasing it, which wraps things up for me emotionally. And of course, I’ll be touring it, so it’s never totally closed. I’m quite spiritual in that way, that I think there are these cycles, and you have to honor that cycle for what it is, then let it end for another cycle to start. And I think the album is the perfect way to do that, with a start and an ending. I’ve already written a million songs for the next record! But I think it’s good for someone for me to have a start and an end. Then people get that experience of listening to it, in its entirety.
Do you feel like you exorcized some of the negative experiences that you’ve had that you, rightly, call out and talk about in some of your songs?
One-hundred percent! Yes. There’s so much more I could say. With a song like “Hard To Love Me”, I thought, “I’ve gotten that thing out.” But in a way, I haven’t. However, it was very cathartic in many ways, and I think the defiance of the record itself was very cathartic. In the birth of it, I had to just be defiant, and that’s what got me through. I don’t know, for the next album, whether I’ll have the same kind of defiance, but it was just necessary for me in my life. In saying that, I’ll probably always be exploring some of the ideas in these songs. Obviously, with everything going on politically here, it felt even more heightened, like the fury in some of those songs. I definitely got some stuff out.
I’m sure that it’s better than, for some reason, restraining yourself from writing about these things.
Oh, yes. I’m honestly in a place where I feel quite fearless, because I’ve said a lot of the things that scare me, and I can say the things now.
It’s definitely a good place to build from. I’m thinking of a song like “Wings”, that’s fairly damning of society, but I think that’s fair. I recognize a lot of my own experiences as a young woman in that song. I was thinking it must feel good to get to say the things that you wish you’d been able to say at the time.
With that song, there’s definitely a greater peace now, and even in seeing how people have responded to it, and the initial fury that went into that song. There is a peace with the world I was talking about in that song. My feelings are less hot and raging about that after writing that song.
Obviously, that song is gendered, talking about the female experience, but I was also thinking that it kind of doesn’t have to be. People who have had the experience of being marginalized and silenced will relate, regardless, no matter who they are.
Totally, and I see that in the messages I get from people who have connected with it. I’m constantly getting messages about it. It’s exactly what you’re saying. Particularly, a lot of trans people have reached out to me in terms of being told what to wear and how to feel. I think it goes beyond a gender binary.
