Altsounds - WHY? - Eskimo Snow [Album]

It’s always been the case that WHY?’s music is subordinate to its lyrics. This isn’t a disparaging statement, and the music is no worse for it - it just means that the arrangements are carefully crafted around the rhythm of the words. It’s arguably a much better way to go about songwriting than shoehorning meaningless rhyming couplets into any generic pop structure. And lead singer Yoni Wolf’s traditionally been very proud of his lyrical content. Last year’s “Alopecia” was sometimes cutting but always graceful; occasionally aggressive but mostly charming. Wolf is a poet who could be said to flirt with hip-hop but has enough decency not to be caught in flagrante.

So why have the lyrics so low in the mix in so many of the songs? Why have the hyperkinetic bells and whistles take so much of the production credit? I’d stop short of suggesting that he was ashamed of “Eskimo Snow”’s lyrics. But they are more guarded. The whole thing traipses between retrospection and introspection. “Lay me down in a hearseback, it's where my new best look is at” - three albums in and already coming to terms with death?

The entire album is unforgivingly wintery. ‘January Twenty Something’ is full of Christmassy Sufjan Stevens twinkles that continue over the next three tracks or so. ‘Even the Good Wood Gone’ might be the cleverest arrangement, with triplet-fuelled subversions of classic American country guitar churned with a healthy dose of spacey reverb pianos.

After that, the holidays are long gone and there’s two more months of snow to contemplate before anything remotely optimistic is on the cards. So make sure you smile whilst you have the chance - the vocal percussion on intro track ‘These Hands’ and the lyrics from ‘Against Me’ (“Will all my unused seed collect like mercury, in some kind of afterlife for halves? Should I offer up my lats and pecs as stakes in death?) are splendidly unreserved.

The last track of the first half is very much that - the last track of the first half. There’s a grand crescendo in ‘Into the Shadows of My Embrace’ but it may as well have come at the end of the track before. So it’s not even a game of two halves; however tempting it is to draw a rounded conclusion about WHY? being better steeped in either acidic merriment (first half of the album) or circumspect meditation (second half), the album just doesn’t allow it. Track 8 - ‘Berkeley By Hearseback’ (from which the first quoted lyric is from) is the best on the album. It maintains a pace, but somehow feels full of air, giving itself space to breathe. The vocals are also at their most melodic - clever, personal and beautiful. The next track, ‘This Blackest Purse,’ isn’t far behind, with a lilting 80s ballad influence that is full of restraint. But ‘On Rose Walk, Insomniac’ is frankly difficult to listen to and ‘One Rose,’ refreshingly calm though it is, does more to punctuate the album than provide it with content.

“Eskimo Snow” was recorded alongside “Alopecia” and Wolf says that initially they were undecided on which to release first. The identity of the two albums is clear. “Eskimo Snow” is accomplished and even maintains a narrative - not only within itself, but also taking the ‘purposed, thoughtful album’ spot in WHY?’s trajectory. It’s a sensible move for the band, but you might find yourself contending the honesty of the content - is this really how they feel? - of both this and “Alopecia,” given their shared conception. Perhaps its best to think of them as twins, separated at birth, raised among different families. We should celebrate their reunion, and look forward to what they might achieve together...