WHY?
Eskimo Snow
Art school drop out or not, Yoni Wolf unlocks a wealth of masterfully crafted melancholic tunes. Eskimo Snow is the Cincinnati trio’s fourth album and technically a follow up to 2008’s Alopecia, but the band recorded the two discs together and it was only when they were snowed in at their Minneapolis studio did the idea emerge to do a split record. Eskimo Snow is a counterpoint to Alopecia with its Americana, folk and psychedelic styles.
Unfolding at a stately pace, Wolf is both an elegant and raw wordsmith. First single, ‘This Blackest Purse’ is a primer to the emotional journey into the throes of mortality, failure and disillusionment to come. Might seem like a reach, but giving it a listen, it’s an accessible and eager track with verses fraught with images of the broken: ‘I wanna speak at an intimate decibel/With the precision of an infinite decimal/To listen up and send back a true echo/Of something forever felt but never heard/I want that sharpened steel of truth in every word.’ I’ve been listening to this song all summer, and the chorus is just magnificent with its build-up and piano, asking: ‘Should our heroes be holding this blackest purse? Mom, am I failing or worse? Mom, am I failing or worse? What should these earnest hands be holding?’
Wolf’s narrative style lends an air of authenticity to the album. For the studio sessions, the trio brought in Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson from Fog to record as a live quintet, and WHY?’s production and recording style complement the earnest songs. Case in point: ‘Against Me’ twinkles with no overdubs on Doug McDiarmid or Wolf’s vocals.
In the creepy ‘Even the Good Wood Gone,’ Wolf likens himself to a mummy in a museum, asking for ‘no flash photography,’ rather clever. Amidst the fuzzy guitar on ‘Into the Shadows,’ Wolf unabashedly talks about his loneliness and a certain act he suspects his neighbor hears him doing. ‘Berkeley by Hearseback’ is a folksy number reminiscent of a certain singer with proficiency for sad bastard songs. ‘On Rose Walk, Insomniac’ nearly rocks out, but it teases and holds back.
‘Eskimo Snow’ gracefully closes the album with guitar finger-picking and Wolf coming to terms with all the heavy questions he’s doled out in the last thirty-five minutes of rapture.
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