Plumbiferous Media

Why? is one of the found­ing bands of Cal­i­for­nia indie-hip hop label anti­con., and the care­ful mix of indie, folk, and hip-hop they’ve cul­ti­vated since their for­ma­tion in 1997 is a per­fect exam­ple of anticon.‘s unique brand of music. Led by Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf (orig­i­nally known as Why? prior to the group’s found­ing), Why? com­bines a num­ber of seem­ingly dis­cor­dant musi­cal styles to craft music that is exper­i­men­tal, expres­sive, and intensely cre­ative. Their newest album, Eskimo Snow, which leans towards the indie end of Why?‘s musi­cal con­tin­uum, is an excel­lent and thor­oughly enter­tain­ing piece of music.

Musi­cally, Why? has retained the often sub­dued instru­men­tals of their ear­lier albums, using muted per­cus­sion as well as a wide range of com­pli­men­tary instru­ments, includ­ing fre­quent use of piano-led, col­or­ful sec­tions (such as the first sec­tion of “Jan­u­ary Twenty Some­thing,” which builds the track with an expertly placed light intro). Care­ful mix­ing blends Wolf’s voice, with its down-to-earth emo­tional impact, with the always-active musi­cal sec­tions, cre­at­ing an impres­sively fluid sound which is still quite capa­ble of sud­denly cap­tur­ing the atten­tion of the lis­tener. The few weak instru­men­tal sec­tions of Eskimo Snow are those which become over-filled, going against Why?‘s more sub­tle strengths, such as the oddly elec­tronic sec­tion of “On Rose Walk, Insom­niac,” which becomes more con­fus­ing than inter­est­ing to lis­ten to by its completion.

Yoni Wolf’s slightly rough half-singing, which places Why? squarely between hip-hop and indie, is as dis­tinct on Eskimo Snow as his ear­lier work, with the same more-melodic struc­ture as the rest of Why?‘s newest album. Wolf’s voice pro­vides a simul­ta­ne­ously firm and fluid vocal struc­ture to the album, as his nuance-filled tone ebbs and flows through the metaphor­i­cally rich con­tent of Eskimo Snow. Small vari­a­tions in Wolf’s voice - minute changes in color or tempo - serve as a con­trast with much larger, much more sud­den changes. Occa­sional guest vocal­ists pro­vide a sort of echo for Wolf (most notably on the open­ing track, “These Hands,” where Doug McDi­armid pro­vides a soft under­tone to Wolf’s voice), expand­ing the range of Eskimo Snow’s vocal ele­ment. Given Why?‘s hip-hop influ­ence, the obvi­ous impor­tance of Wolf’s voice is not remark­able - but his abil­ity to allow his voice to lead the music while pre­vent­ing it from over­shad­ow­ing the instru­men­tals is.

Eskimo Snow is as rich lyri­cally as it is vocally, char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally filled with the utterly frank, occa­sion­ally blunt, but always thought-provoking prod­ucts of Yoni Wolf’s cre­ative mind. Fol­low­ing the elec­tronic, swelling intro to “These Hands,” Wolf wastes no time what­so­ever in start­ing in with the story of the track: “I wear the cus­tom­ary clothes of my time / Like Jesus did / With no rea­son not to die / Fac­ing his­tory / With lit­tle to no irony / Like I’m some for­got­ten South­ern city Sher­man razed / Still hid under thick smoke after all these years.” Wolf’s lyrics are vivid in the tales they tell, and they’re filled with sub­tleties that give them a fur­ther, impres­sive depth. Self-questioning to the end, Wolf won­ders: “Am I too con­cerned with the burn of scrutiny?” “Will I spit empty threats / Until all that’s left is a mil­lion zeros printed on a roll of ticker tape?” Through Eskimo Snow, Yoni Wolf poses more ques­tions than he answers - but that’s what makes the album, and indeed all of Wolf’s work, so compelling.

Eskimo Snow is a depar­ture in style for Why? - more melodic, filled with more com­plex instru­men­ta­tion than the group’s ear­lier work, and with a vocal shift in a sim­i­lar vein. Why? has orches­trated this change quite well, and thus pro­duced an inno­v­a­tive album which takes their strengths in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. Eskimo Snow is an excel­lent and thor­oughly inter­est­ing exam­ple of Why?‘s ver­sa­til­ity, at the same time musi­cally and cere­brally inter­est­ing. In this man­ner, Eskimo Snow is both an exper­i­ment for the band and a con­tin­u­a­tion of the qual­i­ties they’ve dis­played in their ear­lier work. And in both of these ways, Eskimo Snow is an excel­lent album.

This post is tagged 80-89, Why?