NOTES FROM THE LUTSKO DEPARTMENT: Reset
This afternoon, Nick Lutsko dropped the video for “Reset,” the newest single off his latest album, Ends. The video represents a remarkable collaboration between over 20 animators and video artists, who pass the baton of the song between styles and concepts like a sort of audiovisual exquisite corpse game. The video’s recurring image is a big red button, which Lutsko presses repeatedly to transition across different realities–here he is in a Fleischer-type 1930s style; now he’s an anime hero. The more distinct the segments are in craft and concept, the more giddy the effect—they range from the crude to the cinematic, but they all hang together in perfect harmony.
“Reset” is centered around a supremely Lutskoian idea: “Gotta get somewhere, anywhere other than where I am.” The words evoke the closing line of a highlight track off Lutsko’s prior LP, Swords: “I just know there’s something better than this.” The Nick Lutsko musical persona clearly wrestles a sort of restless dissatisfaction, and appropriately, the song’s instrumentation tends towards the heavy and ominous. The video segments feature Nick in distress or peril, running from something, as he did in the “Run” video—hardly a repeat trick, though, this is a developing Nick Lutkso leitmotif, establishing a set of shared themes explored across distinct works.
As we move through the video, we may start to notice winks in the direction of Lutsko’s past work—a telltale pair of wide, bloodshot eyes evoke the familiar character of Greezy; the clowns from the 2019 “Sideshow” video appear, while a cartoon band’s drum kit notes that they are the Gimmix, an early Lutsko project—but there are only a few.
Then, there’s a dramatic cut.
We’re behind the scenes of the “Run” video, and a director with a megaphone informs Lutsko that they’ll be doing another reset now: ”We’re gonna go on to the next one where you control your own destiny, all right?”
And then we see something profoundly surprising: Nick Lutsko as a toddler admiring his father’s guitar. From there, we’re treated to a quick-cut montage of home movie footage dragging us through Lutsko’s life as a musician, from a guitar birthday cake to performances in the school gym. We only break chronology to jump back in time: little Nick makes a face at the camera.
This is the central tension to the Nick Lutsko project: it’s not hard to take this stuff pretty seriously, but as soon as you do, some version of Lutsko sticks out his tongue at you.
The director Paul Thomas Anderson has a term: gearshift movies. He’s referring to films like Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, which takes a dramatic turn from screwball romance to hard-edged thriller in the last act. “Reset” is a gearshift song—at about the halfway point, or around the time the video tells us Nick is going to control his own destiny, the song shifts from something ominous to something triumphantly buoyant. Cello and two violins surge on the soundtrack while the image turns to something else again: a speedrun through the Nick Lutsko canon. If the references were sparing before, now we’re plunged into a sea of Desmonds and Greezys and Cowboys Jon.
“Big Nick Elected President of Everything” a newspaper blares—the video brings us to a point of outrageous hyperbolic ego, a hallmark of one flavor of the Lutsko persona. But by virtue of its placement adjacent to the home movies, this feels like an earned victory lap, no matter how ridiculous the content. By the time Gremlins 3 has been awarded #1 Film of the Century at the Oscars, earning a nod from Steven Spielberg, you’re not sure whether to laugh or cheer, and you have little choice but to do both.
Soon, the “Reset” video descends into a sort of pleasurable overload, shifting too quickly to process. The joy is fast and furious, and the artistry of an extraordinarily high level. In short: it’s a Nick Lutsko project. Every video off “Ends” has been remarkable, but the “Reset” video is a sort of pinnacle—a treat for the Lutsko faithful, a showcase for a bushel of incredible artists, and a celebration of a uniquely thrilling piece of music.