Part of The What of Why? (Disc. #3)

There’s a tossed-off moment at the outset of “Bad Entropy,” from 2003's Oaklandazulasylum – Why?'s first album – where Wolf nonchalantly declares, “I’m recording the vocals in my underwear.” If this doesn’t give you an idea of the modest, personal nature of this music, then I’m not sure what will. In any case, it’s a perfectly apt description of the nature of these early Why? tunes, stitched together as they are from barely adept acoustic guitar melodies, cheap, programmed beats, and a string of oddball samples. Needless to say, it's a unique sound, one that has few antecedents outside of those early Beck records and a couple of likeminded experimenters within the Anticon stable. More than any of Wolf’s subsequent work, Oaklandazulasylum feels almost collage-like, as if patchworked from dozens of melodic ideas Wolf simply has no time to fully develop. It’s very nearly the antithesis of Eskimo Snow, which is dense and, for the most part, overly cerebral, whereas this music breathes and flows rather freely. Wolf, then, seems to excel when playing it by ear so to speak, letting his hop-scotching syllables tangle in a mess of ambiguousness while rinky-dink instrumentation skips along in unison.

With that being said, I can also see how something like this could be potentially off-putting to some unsuspecting ears. After all, Wolf doesn’t have the most expressive or technically accomplished voice, yet his stream-of-consciousness wordplay and impressively economical set-up more than make up for any of these self-imposed limitations. In fact, Wolf’s restlessly confounding lyrics were arguably at their peak here, just as prone to tongue-in-cheek boasts (“I fucked your girlfriend and I’d probably do it again”) as they were to unexpected sociological admissions (“I just found out for sure / The girl I have a crush on is a lesbian”). At the same time, however, it can be rather difficult to determine just what exactly is personal and what is a put-on here, especially in light of other pointed lines such as, “Sure you saw me naked but I never took my make-up off.” Only recently has Wolf opened up the emotional avenues in his work, and in many ways this has evidenced his growth as a pop songwriter, but even still, there’s something pleasingly off-kilter about the lyrics presented on Oaklandazulasylum.  

Of course, things like this never last, and it wasn’t long after the album’s release in 2003 that Wolf decided to recruit a full-band to help flesh out his myriad ideas. Two years later, with a full band now in tow including Wolf’s brother Josiah on drums, guitarist Matt Meldon, and floating member Doug McDiarmid, Why? released both the Sanddollars EP and their sophomore LP, Elephant Eyelash. Despite a few standout moments, to my ears these records sound something like the newly constituted band getting their proverbial feet wet, more interesting via context than in actual execution – in the other words, good, but noticeably transitional. The band (now tightened into a three-piece) wouldn’t reach their full potential until 2008's Alopecia, at which time they could finally lay claim to one of the best full-lengths of a given year.

And yet, seeing as how my colleague Chris Nowling feels about Elephant Eyelash, I guess you could say this all depends on what you look for in any given Why? album. Personally, I prefer Why? operating at either extreme, disregarding the middle distance and shooting for, if not exactly provocation than certainly invigoration. So while a couple of these other Why? albums find the band operating competently, it’s actually at their most stylistically scattershot that I find myself most impressed. However, the fact that Wolf has presented the listener with so many options continues to be his true gift as an artist. He still hasn’t made a bad album by any stretch, but it can nonetheless be a frustrating journey to watch him occasionally undercut himself. Luckily, few modern artists record as mirthful material as Why? has given us, and the rewards of Oaklandazulasylum in particular are of an unassumingly high level.

Last Word:

The debut album produced under the Why? moniker finds budding producer/songwriter/rapper Yoni Wolf displaying a range of talent that has never again been captured quite so fearlessly.

Review By:
Jordan Cronk, Music Editor

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