Anticon Anniversary Shows.

 

Anticon is turning 15 years old this year and they are celebrating with two anniversary shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Both events will feature a stellar lineup of Anticon artists past, present and future including Alias, Baths, D33J, Daedelus, Doseone, Jel, Odd Nosdam, Serengeti, Why? and more.

September 5 - San Francisco - 1015 Folsom - Buy Tickets

September 6 - Los Angeles - Echo & Echoplex - Buy Tickets

Anticon SXSW 2013 Showcase

Two Bay Area Why? Shows.

Why? is playing two Bay Area shows today and tomorrow. Tonight's show is in the East Bay at The New Parish. Tomorrow's show is West Bay at The Great American Music Hall. More live dates including SXSW 2013 info HERE.

Why? Shows Us How To Make An Album Cover.

Why? EP & Tour Dates.

On August 14th Why? will release a limited-edition 12" called Sod in the Seed via the Anticon label. The EP is a precursor to a new full-length album scheduled for this Fall.

Sod in the Seed Track List:

1. Sod in the Seed
2. For Someone
3. The Plan
4. Probable Cause
5. Twenty Seven
6. Shag Carpet

Fall tour dates with Doseone, Serengeti & Jel can be found HERE.

Explore Why? catalog HERE.

The New Why? Album Is On It's Way.

Why's Eskimo Snow album is slated for a September 22nd release yet there's already a fair amount of jocking, hyping and other good things stirring about....

* Release details, artwork, tracklisting MP3 and tour dates posted on Pitchfork 7/21/09

* Release details, MP3 and video posted on Stereogum 7/21/09

* Release date, details, tour dates, MP3 on Tiny Mix Tapes 7/22/09

* "The Blackest Purse" was RCRD_LBL's Download Of The Day 7/22/09

* XLR8R feature with tour dates and relase details 7/22/09

THEMSELVES theFREEhoudini Mixtape.

Click here to download almost forty minutes of free music featuring: Buck 65, Aesop Rock, Busdriver, Lionesque, Slug of Atmosphere, D-Styles, DJ Baku, Pedestrian, Sole, Serengeti, and Yoni Wolf and Odd Nosdam as cLOUDDEAD. How rad are Themselves? Thanks dudes.

Themselves will be in Austin this week:
3/18 Mohawk Anticon / Ghostly showcase 1:00 AM
3/18 Red 7 Force Field PR & Terrorbird Media SXSW '09 Blowout 3:35 PM
3/19 Beauty Bar The Bay Bridged Bay Area Takeover Day Party 4:15 PM
3/19 Smokin' Music Knitting Factory Showcase / DJ set between bands
3/20 The Sidebar Park The Van Records, Partisan Records, indie outlaw, The Knitting Factory 4:30 PM

The Triumphant Return Of Themselves.

Themselves return after a six year hiatus with new mixtape, album, festival stops and more.

Themselves: Themselves, the Bay area duo of DoseOne and Jel (both also key members of the group Subtle), have returned from a six year hiatus with a flurry of activities and releases planned for 2009. It's no mistake that this resurrection comes hot on the heels of the Anticon label's tenth anniversary Themselves have long been one of the label's flagship groups.

First up for Themselves is a trio of festival appearances, starting with Noise Pop in San Francisco next week, then SXSW in March, and Coachella in April. In early March, theFREEhoudini mixtape will drop in various places around the internets, featuring a dizzying array of guests, including Slug, Aesop Rock, Busdriver, Why?, Buck 65, Passage, DJ Baku, Alias, Pedestrian, Sole, Serengeti, D Styles and The Lionesque. As DoseOne put it, "TheFREEhoudini is an inspired Themselves rendition of the classic mixtape medium, housing a medley of original music, it features every rapper we have ever shared a cause with in the past decade. It is also a gift, for these curious times in the consumption of music."

In August 2009 Themselves will drop its third official full-length album, CrownsDown which Dose refers to as such - "CrownsDown is our statue - to rap as it reered us - and the arch and arrow, of what it is to be us, in a decade of music made and the temperature of these two thousands."

It's also worth pointing out that theFREEhoudini mixtape and CrownsDown will be the 19th and 20th releases of DoseOne's career, respectively.

THEMSELVES Live:
02/28 San Francisco, CA The Apple Store - (Terrorbird / XLR8R Noise Pop Day Party)
03/18 - 03/21 Austin, TX SXSW
04/19 Indio, CA CoachellaThemselves

theFREEhoudini (Anticon)
Dropping March, 2009
Featuring: Aesop Rock, WHY?, BUSDRIVER, DJ Baku, BUCK 65, ALIAS, D STYLES, SOLE, Serengeti, Pedestrian, SLUG, PASSAGE, The Lionesque

All Anticon Revolver USA Podcast #14.

Revolver USA's Podcast #14 features Shaun from Anticon Records. Shaun spins upcoming, rare, and released tracks from : Why?, Themselves, Odd Nosdam, Anathallo, SJ Esau Remixed by Bracken, and Restiform Bodies. We're talking 34:22 minutes of unadulterated Anticon awesomeness.

You can stream or download an AAC file of this podcast and all other Revolver podcasts at: http://www.midheaven.com/audio/podcast/

Why? 'Eskimo Show' Take Away Show.

From Crackle: Take-Away Show: Why? - "Eskimo Snow"

Why? is still on tour:
10/22 Moderne-Poitiers, FR @ Confort (w/ Son Lux)
10/23 Saint Etienne, FR @ Le Fil (w/ Son Lux)
10/24 Dijon, FR @ La Vapeur (w/ Son Lux)
10/25 Paris, FR @ BB Mix Festival (w/ Son Lux)
10/27 Amiens, FR @ Pirates Cabaret (w/ Son Lux)
10/28 La Havre, FR @ Electrique (w/ Son Lux)
10/29 Rennes, FR @ L'Antipode (w/ Son Lux)
10/30 Nantes, FR @ Festival Yamoy (w/ Son Lux)
10/31 Vendome, FR @ Rockomotives (w/ Son Lux)
11/01 Dublin, IRE @ Andrews Lane Theatre (w/ Son Lux)
11/04 London, UK @ Scala
11/06 Massy, FR @ Centre Culturel
11/07 Metz, FR @ Musique Volante
11/8 Colmar, FR @ Super Sound Festival
11/10 Hamburg, DEU @ Uebel und Gefährlich
11/11 Berlin, DEU @ Maria Am Ufer
11/12 Leipzig, DEU @ Ut Connewitz-
11/13 Prague, CZE @ Double007

Yoni Wolf of Why? Rattles Off A List Of Favs For Pitchfork.

Guest List: Why?
Guest List by Yoni Wolf

Welcome to the latest edition of Pitchfork's Guest List. Each week, we ask one of our favorite artists to fill us in on what they've been up to lately: which tracks they can't stop spinning, what books they can't put down, and what new bands they've caught on tour. This week it's Yoni Wolf of Why?, who secretly aspires to be an Olympic figure skater, protests having to hear techno on the radio in the morning, and finally explains why "Super Mario Bros. 2" is so different from the series' other titles.

>> Favorite New Songs from the Past Year

That's a tough one. I don't know that many new things, so much. Let's see, there's that song, I really like that song on that Dntel record [Dumb Luck]. I really like the Jenny Lewis song on that. That's an awesome song. It's called "Roll On". And there, we put out a record by these guys called Thee More Shallows. There's a song on there I really like, called, "Night at the Knight School". I don't know if you've heard that, but that's the shit. That's a great song. There was a Fog record that came out this year, some friends of mine. There's a song on there I really like. It's called, "I Have Been Wronged". It's a terrific song. And there's a Xiu Xiu song on the record that just came out, it was the single, I think. You guys had it up on your site for a while, "I Do What I Want When I Want". That's a real nice song.

>> Favorite Older Songs at the Moment

I've been listening to this Leonard Cohen song called "Take This Longing", which is the last song on the The Best of Leonard Cohen, which is fucking awesome. I've been listening to that record the past couple of days. Let's say Liz Phair, "Chopsticks". I've been listening to that a lot. I've been listening to "Grounded" a lot, which is a Pavement song off of Wowee Zowee. Yeah, I suppose those are a few that I've been really over-obsessing about lately.

>> Favorite New Band

There's a band that we're bringing on tour with us that I like a lot. It's called Cryptacize. They're some homies of mine. It's Nedelle [Torrisi], she had a solo act on Kill Rock Stars for a while, and Chris Cohen, who used to be in Deerhoof. And this other guy [Michael Carreira -Ed.]. It's a real nice little project. It's cool. It's really quiet. Sort of understated, but real pretty melodies, and cool arrangements.

>> Favorite Song Ever

Favorite song ever? Uh...how about the theme song to "Curb Your Enthusiasm"? [starts humming "Curb" theme song] I'm just kidding. That's got to be the most annoying thing. I watched 10 episodes in a row, and every time that comes on, I'm like, "nooooooooo! What am I doing with my life?" I don't know. Favorite song, that's a tough one...let's go with the theme song from "Curb Your Enthusiasm" [laughs].

>> Best Recent Concert

I was at this Dirty Projectors show, this was a few months ago, but this would have to go down as the best show I've seen in...maybe ever. It was pretty incredible. They played a show in San Francisco at Bottom of the Hill, and it just blew my fucking mind. Honestly, like, they're so tight; that dude [Dave Longstreth], he must be a slave-driver. I don't know what the fuck kind of hypnotism he's into. Like, he's definitely on some shit, I'll say that. I don't know, they sound so fucking great, the harmonies.... There's this one song where the two girls are like, one's on the on beat, one's on the off beat...I don't know, that just made me want to fucking curl up and die somewhere. That show, Jesus, I couldn't believe it!

>> Last Great Film I Saw

I just saw that There Will Be Blood movie. That was the last movie I saw in theaters. It was good, man. Pretty crazy...Daniel Day-Lewis, man. Gotta give it up to DDL. Killin' it! Very believable. It's disturbing, but it's good.

>> Last Great Book I Read

I just read a book by Flannery O'Connor, called Wise Blood. Have you read that one?

Pitchfork: Actually, it's one of my favorite books of all time.

It's terrific. I really liked that. There's this passage, I had to read it for like 20 people. The book is about this guy who shows up in this small town and decides that he wants to become a preacher for the Church of Christ Without Christ or some nihilist kind of shit. He ends up, well, I won't ruin it.

I like her writing, mostly. It's not even the story that interests me so much, it's just the way that she puts her sentences together. There's this passage in the second chapter, I think, that's just about a paragraph long, and it's just the most perfect writing. It captures the sublime and the very discreet all at one. Little subtleties, while capturing the movement of the universe. She's terrific.

>> Favorite Piece of Musical Equipment

I have this AKG-C414. I don't want to sound like a fucking nerd. It's a microphone! I got it for, as an advance for this old band of mine called cLOUDDEAD. The label guy gave me this mic to use for the record. Since then-- that was maybe five or six years ago-- I've just always used this mic and this mic only, pretty much, to record at my house. It's just tried and true, works pretty much on anything. >> Favorite Record Shop

I just like other people's iTunes collections. That's pretty much how I roll these days. There was a time, maybe, where I'd go to the record store, but now I just sort of trust other people's opinions, and go with what they tell me to take off their iTunes. It's really the best way to learn about new music for me. I have some friends that are very savvy. I don't really know shit, or know how to learn shit about music, so I just trust about five people as my trustworthy advisors.

>> Best Purchase of the Past Year

I went in on this little four-room bed and breakfast place. It's outside of Port Au Prince in Haiti. This realtor friend of mine advised me on this thing, so I went in on it with five other recording artist people. It's this little four-room bed and breakfast, real cute. I've seen pictures, I've never been there, but I'm proud of the little place. It's called Le Chateau de l'Homme Triomphe, which I think is the Chateau of the Triumphant Man. Nice little place, and one day maybe I'll retire down there and run the place or some shit. I don't know. It's not really about the money, it's just cool to have a place like that to be able to go if I want to spend some time or whatever.

>> Best Thing I Did This Year

That's easy, that's very easy for me. This is a little weird for me to say; I don't think I've ever said this to the press. I've been figure skating since I was a little kid. My parents put me in lessons when I was six years old, and I've been doing it every since. It's not like I'm that good at this point, but when I was 16, I actually tried out for the Olympics. I placed 332nd. I can't say that things went so well for me, but that's something... 332nd, that's something [laughs].

Well, I was in Calgary in October 2007 and I met some really important people in a café, actually. Just struck up a conversation, and we were talking about figure skating and shit, and somehow it came up that they knew about Why? They asked me if I wanted to go skate the Stampede Corral. I don't know if you know about figure skating much or not, but that's where the 88 Olympics took place. I fucking skated on the same ice as Brian Boitano, Viktor Petrenko, Debi Thomas. It was a fucking thrill. It was amazing. l just did a fucking salchow of glory there. I think I skated better than I have in 10 years there. The vibe was right, I could just feel the fucking energy, it was just pulsating.

>> Favorite Venue

You know what? I really like the Great American Music Hall right here in San Francisco. We're playing there. We're headlining for the first time on March 6. That's our record-release show for Alopecia. I'm really looking forward to that. We've played there a handful of other times, opening for people and stuff like that. This will be our first headlining show. We're psyched. It's a big place, a beautiful room, chandeliers... Actually, I don't know if they have chandeliers [laughs], but it's a nice room anyway.

>> Favorite TV Show at the Moment

I love ["Curb Your Enthusiasm"], I do love that! That's definitely one of them, and that Season Six is disgustingly funny. But there's another show I've been watching. A show called "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". It's some funny shit. It's kind of like a cross between "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and...what else is it like? It's got that same uncomfortable feeling as that show does. It's goofier or something like that. It's zanier, a little bit. It's a funny show.

>> Favorite Video Game at the Moment

I don't play video games. I did play video games not so long ago. One night, at my friend Adam's house-- you know the band Subtle?-- he's the guy from that band, and every two weeks he'll start pestering me, like, "let's get together, bring your boys over, we'll drink some beers and play some video games." He wants to have boys' night or whatever. I'm always like, "yeah, yeah, yeah, sure" but it never happens. Well, finally we made it happen. We went over there, and he has all the systems. But if I'm going to play...I don't even understand the 3-D games. I couldn't really do the Magic Eye thing so well, so Xboxes and shit don't make so much sense to me [laughs]. I always make him put on the regular Nintendo, you know, the first Nintendo. That's what I grew up with. So, we played some Nintendo games: "Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!", "Marble Madness", and "Super Mario Bros. 2".

I don't know if you knew this, but that night, Shawn, the guy who runs anticon., our record label, told us that "Super Mario Bros. 2" was not originally designed as a "Mario Bros." game. It was supposed to be designed as a whole separate kind of game, but to market it better, they decided they would make it Mario. You can tell...he said that, and then like, we were playing that and it's so different! It stands out! "Super Mario Bros. 3" and "Super Mario Bros." are pretty similar. I got as far as the Super NES, so "Super Mario World" or whatever-- that's the same, too. But "Super Mario Bros. 2" is completely different, just the way it's set up. Totally different schtick. I'm glad they did make it Mario, because it was a familiar character that I could latch onto, really stand behind, and purchase. It's a beautiful game, a wonderful game. I love it.

>> Favorite Radio Show

I don't know shows so much, but I always listen to KALX, which is the college radio station at Berkeley. That's pretty much the only station I listen to. I'll flip around to other stations if something really sucks on KALX. It's college radio. Anyone can get a show. It'll be like fucking the super-dancey trance show at 7 in the morning, or something like that. This morning, actually, I was driving my female friend around at 7. She had to go to work. We were listening to KALX. You know, if you have the 7 in the morning show, you have a certain responsibility to play chilled-out shit. Don't accept the 7 in the morning spot if you're going to play fucking house music. No one wants to hear it. You're only alienating people [laughs]. It's a good station, though.

>> My Ringtone

Vibrate, baby. Gotta be vibrate. Always vibrate. I don't need to fucking advertise my shit to everybody if I get a call. That's my own business. You know what I'm saying.

Why? is still on tour:
04/03 Chicago, IL @ The Abbey Pub
04/04 Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
04/05 Madison, WI @ Cafe Montmartre
04/06 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
04/07 Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium
04/08 Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
04/09 Columbia, MO @ Mojo's
04/10 Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot
04/11 Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
04/12 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
04/14 Missoula, MT @ Badlander
04/15 Spokane, WA @ Big Easy
04/16 Vancouver, BC @ Media Club
04/17 Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
04/18 Portland, OR @ Holocene
04/19 Eugene, OR @ Indigo District

Why?'s Alopecia Gets A 8.2 Recommendation By Pitchfork!

Why?
Alopecia
[Anticon; 2008]
Rating: 8.2
Original Review

Eyebrows raised when Why? were chosen to support the Silver Jews on a 2005 tour, but that seemingly incongruous bill made more sense when considering one of Berman's better lines: "All my favorite singers couldn't sing." Likewise on Alopecia, Yoni Wolf doesn't seem to know he isn't a diva on "Simeon's Dilemma", that he isn't a New Pornographer on "Fatalist Palmistry", or that he's not a grizzled battle-rapper on "The Fall of Mr. Fifths", and he won't let any of it get in his way. He's got too much to say to be concerned about it.

"Unclassifiable" is usually lazy shorthand for albums featuring both guitars and keyboards. Alopecia is a liquid in the sieve of genre: put it on headphones and it begs to bump; recite lyrics aloud and people will look at you with loathing usually reserved for religious leaflet canvassers and slam poets; try and decode the words in your head and you'll only hear the melodies behind them. As for his lyrics, it's wrong to call them stream-of-consciousness, since that implies Wolf is a poor self-editor; nothing about Alopecia is lazy. It's more like 5 a.m. journal entries cut up and turned to collage. Clearly, every line won't be pure gold, but they all add up to something.

Alopecia opens with the chain-gang lurch of "The Vowels Pt. 2", its slow claps and big, watery bass hits rubbing against Wolf's most insistent rap/sing delivery, and the unlikely hook of "Cheery-ay, Cheery-ee..." somehow becoming the record's most ingratiating. Funnily, the first two lines ("I'm not a ladies man, I'm a landmine, filming my own fake death...") reveal most of the record's preoccupation. No matter what he's on about on Alopecia-- although most of the time, he's pretty easy to follow, especially compared to his Anticon brethren-- sex and death are never far from Wolf's mind. The former is pretty evident on "Good Friday", a crisper revisiting of the acoustic plucking-plus-beats of Why?'s earlier work, and an uncomfortable litany of perversions Wolf "wouldn't admit to his head-shrinker" that includes forgetting Elton John lyrics in karaoke. Wolf's voice is (putting it delicately) distinctive, but his monotone murmur here is just one example of his ability to change up his delivery.

Not that he needs to-- while Wolf fearlessly splays open his head for all to see its contents, the band is the real star (the core of Yoni, brother Josiah Wolf, Doug McDiarmid, and here fleshed out by Fog's Andrew Broder and bassist Mark Erickson). They're what make "The Hollows" work as both tentative and propulsive guitar-rock under Wolf's paranoia, and make "Palmistry" cheerful and memorable pop under the sobriety of his lyrics. "These Few Presidents" is stiff indie rock, with drum-machines and the polite blurt of an organ, until the bottom drops out and cascades of clattering percussion and yawning low frequencies soundtrack the most sincere Hallmark card ever: "Even though I haven't seen you in years, yours is a funeral I'd fly to from anywhere."

"Mr. Fifths" returns to bouncy, rap-minded delivery, with tongue-twisting lines about syphilis and the sound of high heels on marble. But they've got some nerve here, making us wait until the record's last third for its best songs: "A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under" is some strange, sublime triangulation of Steve Reich, deadpan rap swagger, and blustery multi-tracked choruses you could link to Alice in Chains. But trainspotting is beside the point-- the band creates a musical landscape so vivid that every cryptic line doesn't seem inscrutable, but more like puzzles worth unlocking.

The stalker's serenade, "Simeon's Dilemma", is creepy, sure, but then Wolf busts out the falsetto like he's a supporting character in a boy band getting his big solo moment-- you can almost hear him pointing at notes on the invisible scale with his hand. Then there's the disorienting and dreamy behind-the-beat thump of "By Torpedo or Crohn's", featuring what I guess you might expect from underground white-guy rap: cryptic lyrics about throwing up behind Whole Foods, the admission that as a kid he "didn't shit his pants much," and hoping for health food in hell. It's contrasts with the rest of Alopecia, but even as a portrait of a medium existence, it's still a complicated one, and its most lasting impression after the lulling sing-song of the chorus is pervasive anxiety. It's weird to think that 2008 could be a year of reaffirmation for Anticon, but along with Subtle, they just won't adhere to the boxes we've tried to stuff them into.

If there's anything that drags down Alopecia, it's that "Fatalist Palmistry" is the only real sigh of relief on a very sober record (and even that song begins and ends on thoughts of death). Even as it charted a difficult breakup, 2005's Elephant Eyelash had a few more moments of relative sunshine. Here, Wolf's exhaustively catalogued his sins and imperfections as on "Good Friday", and even the stalker in "Simeon's Dilemma" has no release or acknowledgment to look forward to; he braces for the fall, and prepares to "deny, deny, deny." Wolf seems doomed to feel too much here-- to take in everything, and take it all very, very seriously. -Jason Crock, March 11, 2008

Anticon in Austin this week / weekend:
Anticon and Tomlab SXSW Showcase @ Lambert's: (401 W 2nd Street)
01:00 Hey Willpower
12:00 WHY?
11:00 Thee Oh Sees
10:00 Son Lux
09:00 No Kids
08:00 Misha

WHY? and Son Lux will also be playing at various day parties:

03/12/2008
WHY? - Force Field PR & Terrorbird Media SXSW Day Party @ Emo's (4:30pm)

03/13/2008
WHY? - Brooklyn Vegan Party @ Emo's Annex (2:30pm)
Son Lux - Soundcheck/Spiderhouse Presents @ Spiderhouse (7pm)

03/14/2008
WHY? - Soundcheck Magazine's 2nd Birthday Party presented by Dewar's @Emo's Annex (5:30pm)

03/15/2008
Son Lux - Okay Mountain Presents Asthmatic Kitty and Friends @ Okay Mountain Gallery (4pm)

Tiny Mix Tapes Dares To Explain The New Why? Album.

WHY?
Alopecia
Anticon 2008
Styles: a true amalgamation: let’s call it “hip-pop”
Others: cLOUDDEAD, Emperor X, Aqueduct, Fog
Original review

Picture it: a mass of energy is floating through space at an accelerated rate. The energy, when decoded by the complex circuitry of our ear canals, resembles something we recognize as musical notes. This energy, in a brilliant flash of nothing, seems to implode in on itself, wholly disappearing from the black void of space and time. It’s been sucked into the gravitational field of a black hole so immense that it dwarfs our very conception of enormity. This so-decoded musical energy is, seemingly, lost.

Oakland, California. The year is 2008. Note this. A crackle of electricity lights up the sky, and while the residents of the eighth-largest Californian metropolitan area fail to notice it, a wormhole opens up above their fair city for the slightest fraction of a millisecond, releasing the once-lost musical energy. At its constant rate of descent, the invisible mass quickly impacts the ground and spreads in a horizontal trajectory until the whole of the city is engulfed. From there, the fluent mass continues across the continent.

Sound far-fetched? Fine; you try explaining how a group like WHY? can exist in this rudimentary world.

Answering the question, nay, even making an attempt at answering “So, what do they sound like?” is deserving of a gold star. WHY? is a three-piece from Oakland, composed of beat- and word-smith Yoni Wolf, his brother Josiah, and Doug McDiarmid, joined on Alopecia by bassist Mark Erickson and Fog’s Andrew Broder. They’re really less of a black hole and more of a modified vacuum cleaner. They suck up everything along with the dirt: experimental hip-hop, indie rock, sugar-loaded pop, minimalist balladry, etc. And then, once the components are all bundled together, they flip the switch and send it all tumbling back out again and into the recording studio. More plainly, WHY? is the alphabet soup of independent music. Clever, biting, creative, intense, storied, and lurid. There’s really nothing else like it.

Alopecia, their third full-length release and second as a full band, is a darkly tinged juggernaut. 2005’s supremely wonderful but admittedly melancholic Elephant Eyelash is downright cheery in relation. The songs of Alopecia find a renewed interest from Yoni Wolf in delivering straight-up beats and rhymes alongside his more sing-songy efforts. Unsurprisingly, his styles of old and new fit together like it ain’t no joke.

Wolf isn’t in a rush to spit out his verse in a song like “Good Friday,” instead letting the lazy beat lead him through some seriously down-and-out lyrical content. At the same time, it’s considerate that Wolf plays it so that we can get a few laughs from it alongside the cringes. “The Hollows” is a masterpiece, the band’s efforts fully coalescing into a totally monstrous sound that keeps building until it bursts. The sublime opening of “A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under” is a testament to WHY?’s tendency to include every type of sound imaginable and actually make it work. “Fatalist Palmistry” is the only track even approaching the bouncy demeanor of Elephant Eyelash, but with an opening tercet like “I sleep on my back/ ’Cause it’s good for the spine/ And coffin rehearsal,” you know where you’re at.

Alopecia is therapeutic for everyone involved. Wolf is bearing the darkest parts of his soul here. Sometimes they just sound so good that it’s easy to forget that. He’s asking big questions without answers, and when one gets stuck in a rut like that, well, the chances of coming out with a cheerier outlook are slim. But that’s where these songs come in. They’re a total release for Wolf, his band, and anyone who happens to listen and can’t help but be washed over in that wave of understanding. It’s not inaccurate to say that the album seriously considers mortality. Living and dying are weighed on equal scales for the first two-thirds, each seeming as peaceful and viable as the other. But there’s a dilemma in that. That black hole shows up again and Yoni Wolf stares into the very depths of it hoping to take some answer, any answer, away from it. It’s here that Alopecia finds its unified harmony.

Listening to his warbly plea in “Simeon’s Dilemma,” it’s clear Wolf has found what he was looking for. Maybe by the time the recurring refrain (“While I’m alive/ I’ll feel alive”) shows up again in “By Torpedo or Crohn’s,” even those slow to the draw will have picked up on the hints. Rest assured that it hits you in the chest like a mass of energy torpedoing through space and time: “WHY?” was a damn good question to ask.

1. The Vowels Pt. 2 2. Good Friday 3. These Few Presidents 4. The Hollows 5. Song of the Sad Assassin 6. Gnashville 7. Fatalist Palmistry 8. The Fall of Mr. Fifths 9. Brook & Waxing 10. A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under 11. Twenty Eight 12. Simeon’s Dilemma 13. By Torpedo or Crohn’s 14. Exegesis

by Jeffrey Canino

Why? On The Front Page Of Myspace!!!

While riding high off the success of the Hollows 12" and prepping for the release of the Alopecia (03/11) Why? got a nice surprise on Myspace today. Yoni & the boys are currently at 22, 664 friends and rising.

Upcomig live dates:

03/06 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
03/07 Los Angeles, CA @ Natural History Museum
03/08 Tucson, AZ @ Solar Culture
03/09 Phoenix, AZ @ Modified Arts
03/11 Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
03/16 Houston, TX @ Rudyard's Pub
03/15 Austin, TX @ Lambert's (SXSW Showcase 12 AM)
03/17 Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
03/18 Atlanta, GA @ The Drunken Unicorn
03/19 Asheville, NC @ Grey Eagle
03/20 Charlottesville, VA @ Outback Lodge
03/21 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
03/22 New York, NY @ The Knitting Factory
03/23 New Haven, CT @ Sundazed At BAR
03/24 Northampton, MA @ The Iron Horse
03/25 Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East
03/26 Montreal QC @ La Sala Rossa
03/27 Toronto, ON @ Silver Dollar
03/28 Ann Arbor, MI @ Pierpoint at University Of Michigan
03/29 Newport, KY @ Southgate House
03/30 Cleveland, OH @ Beachland
04/01 Columbus, OH @ Cafe Bourbon Street
04/02 Bloomington, IN @ Space 101
04/03 Chicago, IL @ The Abbey Pub
04/04 Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
04/05 Madison, WI @ Cafe Montmartre
04/06 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
04/07 Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium
04/08 Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
04/09 Columbia, MO @ Mojo's
04/10 Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot
04/11 Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
04/12 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
04/14 Missoula, MT @ Badlander
04/15 Spokane, WA @ Big Easy
04/16 Vancouver, BC @ Media Club
04/17 Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
04/18 Portland, OR @ Holocene
04/19 Eugene, OR @ Indigo District

Why? Euro & Domestic 12" Reviewed On Pitchfork Today.

Why? The Hollows EP (U.S.) / (EU)
[Anticon (U.S.) / Tomlab (EU); 2007]
Rating: 7.0 / 7.4

Yoni Wolf and his band Why? are outcasts from groups of outcasts. While Anticon is an apt fit for his verbal diarrhea, even Wolf's folk-leaning early work stood a few yards apart from the label's roster, and their recent work has even less to do with hip-hop than the highly experimental collective that launched records from the likes of Doseone and Odd Nosdam. This isn't necessarily a bad thing-- 2005's Elephant Eyelash further blurred genre lines, leaning on guitar and drums but within freewheeling near-collage-like compositions, and it gained the group its biggest audience to date. A subsequent opening slot for the Silver Jews' first honest-to-god tour delivered on expectations and found them wowing open-minded audiences with their performances and confounding search engines across the country ever since.

Now, Why? issue a pair of 12" records of remixes and covers-- one on Anticon and one on Tomlab-- in advance of their March 2008 album, Alopecia, featuring sometimes unlikely contributions from Boards of Canada, Xiu Xiu, Dntel, Half-Handed Cloud, and members of Yo La Tengo and Islands. Why?'s own contribution to this new EP-- you know, the single it's named for-- is even further from their already tenuous relationship to hip-hop. On the track, Wolf "sings" more, the track's ominous dirge-like beat sounds more rock than hip-hop, and its sudden lurches in tone and instrumental interjections feel that much more linear.

While "The Hollows" is an enticing enough peek at their upcoming full-length, what's more interesting is how much inspiration other artists find in Why?'s material. Not only are these grab-bag EPs consistent-- which should be a contradiction right there-- the songs contributed would fit well in each artists' own catalog. Two groups take a crack at "Yo Yo Bye Bye", from Elephant Eyelash. Xiu Xiu's attempt (from the Anticon EP) is a little too wordy to leave room for Jamie Stewart's dramatic vocals, but he sounds comfortable with the rapid verbiage while the gentle electronic soundscape feels warmer, and has a pulse that races quicker, than much of his band's recent, more contemplative work.

On the Tomlab version, Dump (aka James McNew of Yo La Tengo) offers a version of "Yo Yo Bye Bye" that sounds as intimate as any of his home-recorded projects, and features much of the same reverberating fuzz bass and drum machines, but with a patience and a bump in recording fidelity that make it far less claustrophobic. It's also far less fragmented than the original, which turns out to suit the evocative lyrics just fine.

On the Anticon EP, Half-Handed Cloud are the black sheep, attempting a drums, piano, and voice medley of Why? songs called "Pree-Teen Apocalyptic Film Acting" which is expectedly precious, your enjoyment of which may depend on your tolerance for the band itself and the sound of a musician's ambitions skipping merrily outside the bounds of their ability.

To further twist bullyish tension burns on the arms of fans, The Hollows EPs feature two remixes of tracks from the upcoming Alopecia. Dntel's Anticon EP track returns to his cuddly headphone-techno roots with its insistent, espionage-evoking beat. Wolf's steadier, typical hip-hop delivery makes what could be an MOR move for both into a mind meld instead. But Boards of Canada, with the understated but insistent loping beat they add to "Good Friday", make you wonder why they're not working with more rappers. They bring a newfound clarity and movement to Wolf's words, and even though he's working a deadpan monotone, BoC manage to add several different textures without ever stepping on his toes. Though they've remixed the Anticon roster before, it's a tantalizing step outside of BoC's comfort zone, and an amazingly sensitive collaboration, over which Wolf leabes some provocative call-outs and males plain-faced admittance of the therapeutic value of his lyrics ("shit I wouldn't even admit to my head-shrinker"). The slinky beat and restrained horns make for a track that sounds sun-kissed and debauched all at once.

Joining BoC and Dump on the Tomlab release, Nick T of Islands might throw the biggest curveball on either EP with a cover of Wolf's side-project Reaching Quiet's "Broken Crow". Dour and weightless, it's a sluggish classical piano and drum dirge that ends with an sharply incongruous keyboard tone (not so far from Boards of Canada), hinting at depths his band has yet to plumb. One single and two remixes is a bit of a tease for those waiting on the release of Alopecia in a few months, though each of these singles handily stands apart on their own. -Jason Crock, November 27, 2007