Why?'s Joni Wolf has made a career out of being the creepy guy in the back of the club. Wolf loves to sing about his failures as well as his flaking skin, thinning hair, propensity for compulsive masturbation and throwing up on occasion behind Whole Foods. He is also morbidly obsessed with death. In short he is us, but the us that we are too ashamed to acknowledge on most days. His painfully confessional lyrics are salvaged from simple sad sack navel-gazing by a wordplay not heard since the likes of Stephen Malkmus and David Berman.
Why?'s mix of indie rock with modern composition sets him apart as well from typical hipster culture. Imagine Pavement playing with Steve Reich or Philip Glass and you have a pretty good idea of what Why? sounds like. The music works perfectly to elevate the grotesque and morbid subject matter of Yoni's lyrics into something anthematic, sublime and transcendent. Nowhere is that fusion of ugliness and beauty more apparent than on "Eskimo Snow," Why?'s forth album, and third since Yoni made Why? into a proper indie rock band. The album is emotionally naked, with Yoni singing some of his most straightforward lyrics to date. The music is also a bit more subdued, with piano taking the forefront. But least anyone think this is an Antony and the Johnsons album, it is still very much a Yoni Wolf joint full of syncopated rhythms, inspired indie rock and enough loser/loner/creep declarations to remind you of all those dark corners of the psyche. It is also an album you can't entirely shake. It hides not behind irony or sarcasm, but expresses the striving, the hope, the failure, the fear, the loathing and the beauty that is life itself.
"These Hands/January Twenty Something"
"Even the Good Wood Gone"
Listen to "One Rose" here
0 comments:
Post a Comment