The weird world of Why?—more specifically, the world evoked in
the peculiar lyrics of frontman Yoni Wolf—continues to get
stranger.
On the Oakland-by-way-of-Cincinnati band’s unusual, engrossing
Eskimo Snow (Anticon), scary figures, comical failures and sad
premonitions inhabit a world both self-enclosed and all-encompassing
with religion (Jesus, Maccabees, Book of Numbers, God), geography
(Ohio, Cleveland, Jersey City, Berkeley), food (sea salt, watermelon,
meat), animals (a dead fox, one mongoose, one cobra), characters (high
school soccer girls, ex-girlfriends, the poseur in the bowler, grave
robbers, midwives, the small fry in the bowtie, dead soldiers),
miscellany (ticker tape, a death mask, pissing-boy fountain statues,
fever dreams, a health-club locker) and the personal (mom and “I”).
Started as a pet project by Yoni Wolf, whose deadpan raps and quirky
musical tastes (culled from hip-hop, rock and folk influences) made for
strange bedfellows, Why? soon swelled into a full-fledged band with
Yoni’s brother, Josiah, and friend Doug McDiarmid joining. In 2005, the
group released Elephant Eyelash, a dense, playful album of
quick-witted raps, tender, cutting musical passages, and Yoni’s nasal
vocals, to critical acclaim.
When Why? returned to the studio (Third Ear in Minneapolis) in 2007,
the band enlisted Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson (of the band Fog) and
began recording what would become two albums of material. The first,
Alopecia, was released in 2007 to resounding accolades: An album
of endless oddity and poetry—the musical equivalent of being
dragged down a rabbit hole—it stands as the group’s masterpiece.
Yet, Eskimo Snow, which comes from the same sessions, is an
equally impressive statement with (more) traditional song structures,
minimal hip-hop (the raucous, ringing “Against Me” being a notable
exception) and endless pathos.
The slight, whirling and pinging opening ballad, “These Hands,”
establishes the album’s themes of death (“I wear the customary clothes
of my time / like Jesus did, with no reason not to die”), impermanence
(“Like I’m some forgotten Southern city Sherman razed”), and inadequacy
(“These hands are my father’s hands but smaller”). Yoni Wolf’s sharp,
curious lyrics are often filled with cringe-inducing sad-sack trials
and tribulations—as well as countless death fantasies. Speaking
by phone, Wolf spoke about his tendency to use first-person in his
songs, which he admits are “more or less all loosely autobiographical,
even if embellished or changed.”
“It all melds generally; there’s no hard-and-fast rule about keeping
myself in or out of a song,” Wolf said. “Of course, not everything I
say in first-person is true or necessarily about myself. I mean, I’m
not literally feeding people to Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Although they were recorded during the same session, Alopecia and Eskimo Snow are unique releases. Wolf uses sibling imagery
to suggest the albums are “not twins, but sisters.” According to the
metaphor, Eskimo Snow is both an immaculately primped princess
(Wolf admits to taking an inordinate amount of time with the mastering
and post-production of it) and independent tomboy (its mostly live
recording style gives it a loose, knee-scraped charm).
“After touring Alopecia … I took a different take on the
album and added some post-production, some flavor—compression,
EQ, reverb and delay,” Wolf said. “We recorded live for the most part.
Retained the integrity of the sessions. It’s a new way of working for
us; Alopecia had more overdubs and tweaking.”
One assumption when two albums come from the same session, two years
apart, is that the second release (Eskimo Snow) comprises the
refuse from the first (Alopecia). Yet this set of 10 tracks is
no mere B-sides—as the complicatedly aching, gorgeous and rocking
piano ballad “This Blackest Purse” will attest. From the start of the
recording, Why? consciously separated the tracks into two camps.
“We went into the studio knowing what we wanted to record,” Wolf
said. “When you’re paying a shit-ton of money you have to have a plan.
We teased out songs that fit together, so what’s on Eskimo Snow are the songs that fit naturally into that camp, and the more hip-hop
material we put into the Alopecia camp.”
The dedication to Eskimo Snow can be heard in the songs that
populate the album; Why?, in the past, generally favored deconstructive
approaches to hip-hop, folk and rock structures. From the heart-rending
naked balladry of closer “Eskimo Snow,” to the evocative baroque
gestures (plucked arpeggios on what sounds like a lute) and
country-western twang (lush slide-guitar strokes) of “Even the Good
Wood Gone,” to the nightmarish, hollow tones of “One Rose,” these songs
are muscular, visceral and intellectual.
Lyrically, Wolf continues to mine the first-person (and
quasi-personal) for fodder that is uncomfortable, honest and humorous.
As he’s back in Cincinnati, living at home (“I kind of moved back here
in a way. I’ve been staying with my parents for two months”), it’s easy
to wonder what his family thinks of his occasionally deviant lyrical
indulgences (“Jerking off in an art museum john until my dick
hurts”).
“My dad likes to give as much feedback as I’ll let him. He’s a big
supporter of ours, definitely,” Wolf said. “They tried to ask me about
the part where I say something about kissing my shrink, and I just
said, ‘I definitely don’t want to talk about that,’ and they let it go.
I just got used to it, I guess.”
Wolf is referring to the album’s centerpiece, the chugging rocker
“Into the Shadows of My Embrace,” which takes a string of uncomfortable
confessions (like kissing one’s shrink and being spied on while
masturbating) only to turn the moment self-reflexive and cathartic with
the song’s climactic release: “And I know saying all this in public
should make me feel funny / but you got to yell something that you’ll
never tell nobody.”
When asked if he cares about how critics and fans alike fret about
his graveyard mind (“The rat that’s caught, in the ribs of me / will be
released within the year”), Wolf notes, “It doesn’t make a difference
to me,” before casually admitting, “There’s some dark lyrics,
sure.”
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.