Soul Glo – Soul Glo LP brown

Side A of the record is only pain. The instrumentation departs from the two and three riff simplicity of side B of the record. During writing and recording, Soul Glo specifically set out to create songs that not only dealt with themes of social isolation, alienation, and a despondence that only american life can create for the disillusioned. The first and last songs deal with the country's habit of murdering its revolutionaries and dissenters, while the middle of the record is exclusively about self-analysis of the individual living inside of the system. Lyrics containing some of the most rudimentary self-analyses, questions of self-worth and image that every Black child asks themselves in one form or another as members of a society that places them in the position of social other. The cover art quietly references this part of Black life as a photo of two children playing on a hot day with a police station looming in the background. Side B of Untitled is a 13 track reflection on american Blackness and masculinity loosely told through personal stories of violence, incarceration, social alienation, and obsessive self-analysis. Songs like "New Humanism," "Created in H.I.S. Image," and "The Movement Has No Head," lyrically discuss times of pain in the lives of the band members and how Blackness is a circumstance deeply woven into the answer to the question of how a situation can go from bad to worse. Other tracks, like "Son of a Gun" "Violence Against Black Women Goes Largely Unreported," and "But Fucking Why" specifically discuss the culture of violence that Black people in america have navigated both from within and from a distance. The burning of the american flag as album art is directly referential to both the sentiment that many people feel toward a country that routinely leaves them behind and the feelings of consumption of humanity that those very same people feel from the condition of being marginalized by the dominant, yet alien culture of one's home country.