Alopecia was a striking record. Confessional, obfuscatory, visceral and innovative, it was last year's best album, despite being so unlike any other release. Yoni Wolf somehow managed to take his shadow and put it on an LP—it was his most personal work yet, completely human. But what we gained from the lengthy work was a general comprehension of his neuroses, the allusive and metaphorical lyrics leaving much to the imagination.
Now, his second record in as many years is just out, culled from songs produced during the same Why? sessions that created Alopecia. Eskimo Snow shares much of its predecessor's substance: morose and subverted lyrics, lush instrumentation studded with tinkling piano and bells, steady and powerful percussion and a gravity that's hard to imitate. It fits perfectly into the trend of Why?'s recent work, which has consistently reached the level of high art. Wolf's words wouldn't be out of place in a poem, and the band's fusion of otherwise dissonant styles is one of the most experimental acts going in contemporary music, and of these likely the most listenable. But at the same time, and in much the same way that Okkervil River's The Stand-Ins complemented their The Stage Names, Eskimo Snow breaks off from and advances Alopecia without fully establishing its own autonomy.
Alopecia articulated two particular styles, which became interwoven in the album's many excellent songs. One was experimental, organic hip-hop, Yoni Wolf's anticon modus operandi for years now. The other was melodic indie rock, a direction that he—and the label as well, including such roster-ed rappers as Sole and Doseone—have begun exploring far more intimately in recent years. Snow is a child of this latter side, seemingly grown from the germ of "Song of the Sad Assassin" and "A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under." It's hard to simplify this bloodline to just two tracks, but the singing and instrumentation featured on most of Snow best resembles these instances. Snow is Wolf taking this idea and impregnating it with his unique infatuation with death, loneliness and the obsessions of a private life.
Nowhere on the new album are Why?'s intentions best encapsulated and executed than on its first single, "This Blackest Purse." "Purse" is the penultimate track, but because "Eskimo Snow" is more of an epilogue than a proper entity on its own, it serves as the final scene and a purely gorgeous culmination of Wolf's efforts. He sings with a wrenching sincerity, grappling with the concepts of abandonment and, seemingly, a listlessness that is conveyed by the chorus: "Should our heroes hands be holding this blackest purse?/Mom, am I failing or worse?/Mom, am I failing?/What should these earnest hands be holding?" Wolf yearns for interpersonal humanity, while the band falls and rises behind him in soft-loud-soft cycles of piano and pulsing vocal "oohs." It's lines like, "I wanna speak at an intimate decibel" and "I want that sharpened steel of truth in every word" that manage to focus his less decipherable images elsewhere and make the songs so potent.
Although "This Blackest Purse" is the clear summit of Snow, and possibly this musical thematic as a whole, there are many other instances of similar success. "Into the Shadows of My Embrace" has a retro authenticity to it that quickly turns into a stomping meditation on sex which warps into a flurry of vignettes about guilty deviance and finally back into a coherent, singular flow. "January Twenty Something" begins with an intro almost identical to "A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under," but instead of remaining in a high register it drops down steadily as the song progresses, labeling itself as a suicide note and another expression of sexual guilt. Both of these are consistent motifs throughout the 10 songs; the beautiful instrumentation often serves as a foil for lyrical depression, morbidity and the question of perversion. Wolf lets the listener so into himself that, as a number of critics have pointed out to him in interviews, after the album ends one can't help but genuinely worry about its creator.
Snow's shortcomings are more difficult to confront, as many of them are more or less by design. The first, and most prominent, is that Why?'s greatness comes in some part from its hip-hop aspects. In being almost devoid of the band's frenetic, gritty and blunt wordplay, the album loses the grime that helped make Alopecia so affecting. But to tell Wolf that Eskimo Snow would've been better with a "Good Friday" or "By Torpedo or Crohn's" is dishonest; these two songs confronted emotional and existential isolation in a manner that's absent from Snow, and that subsequently would be out of place. This being said, Why? sacrifices some of their virtuosity by choosing not to work in hip-hop, and the ceiling is set a bit lower.
The other issue becomes greater the further the group strips down its music. The miniature "Rose" suite, "One Rose" and "On Rose Walk, Insomniac," are tender and intriguing, but their acoustic balladry is an uncomfortable mode for Why? to operate in. In terms of the diverging directions that Snow moves, this approach is the least successful, especially when "Insomniac" transforms into an electro-tinged burner. For a band so grounded in dissimilar styles, its actually impressive that this is the only instance of musical schizophrenia on the album.
And then there's "Against Me." Basically tied with "This Blackest Purse" as the album's longest song, its lyrics are the most clearly self-doubting and perplexed of the batch. The verse/chorus structure is unusually conventional for the group, but it still comes across as the album's most complex entry: upon first listen it seems too anomalous to be a proper Why? offering, but Wolf's fingerprints become clearer with each listen, and the words shine brighter with each added level of scrutiny. Initially the least impressive track, it's becoming possible that "Against Me" will rise as far as second-best as Snow chalks up its inevitable dozens of replays.
For what it is, Eskimo Snow is a resounding success. Why? have submitted an album into a genre for once, and comparable to similar efforts, its sophistication and depth of feeling are barely paralleled. But the mere fact that Snow is genre-specific is disappointing. Part of Why?'s immeasurable reward and appeal is its originality, and this record's main effect—though great on its own—will be to further raise expectations for the band's next release. All signs point toward a masterpiece.
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