The Lottery Winners - KOKO - New CD (Card Version)

Format New CD Label: Modern Sky Cat. No. M9529UKCDCW

Released: 21/03/2025

Barcode: 0044003431539

Welcome to KOKO, Lottery Winners’ most adventurous album, while also home to their most infectious songs yet. Having played to over half-a-million people at their shows in 2024 alone, it’s a captivating album which will only see that fanbase continue to grow.

Short for Keep On Keeping On, KOKO’s 12 tracks include a beautiful ode to friendship, a deliriously catchy duet with Reverend And The Makers’ Jon McClure about being unhealthily obsessed with your ex, a literally escapist chantalong funk anthem, a power ballad featuring Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, a tender song of regret, plus the most uplifting, celebratory songs about panic attacks, ADHD and being expelled from school you’ll ever hear. There’s even a dance routine. Following on from The Lottery Winners’ third album ART (Anxiety Replacement Therapy) reached No 1 in May 2023. This is set to be another big release.

One snowy February day in 1963, Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo were photographed in New York City for the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan LP, around the corner from Dylan’s 4th Street apartment. 60 years later, lifelong 4th St resident Jeffrey Lewis had the idea to try to take the same chilly photo but with no pants on, to prove himself “even more” freewheelin’ than Bob! This plan was foiled by global warming, as New York City winters no longer offer snowy street photo ops, but at least Jeffrey tried.

While the album cover might be a native New Yorker’s neighbourhood joke, it also serves to throw down the gauntlet to modern song-smiths, as if to point out that nobody in contemporary songwriting can quite fill Jeffrey’s shoes (barefoot or not). If you thought 2019’s Bad Wiring was an unimprovable high-watermark of the Jeffrey Lewis 20-year discography, prepare to be shook all over again. The range of moods, situations, wordplay and styles here is effortlessly breathtaking, and if you aren’t transported on ten different emotional rollercoasters by the ten songs on this album then you might just be a Chat GPT replicant-bot.