Why? - Moh Lhean

The Quietus

After nearly 20 years in the game, Yoni Wolf’s lyrics are still ham-fisted. He’s that friend who won’t stop reciting bad slam poetry on YouTube – endearingly earnest, wordy as hell, giddily adding synonyms to the point of tautology. Not only is he “white, weak and blind” on ‘Proactive Evolution’, he’s the “opposite of oxen.” Y’know, because they’re brown, strong and sighted? On ‘This Ole King’ we follow him “up skyward” and “down dirtward” – up where the up stuff is, down where the down stuff is. Got it.

Trouble is, the words sound so nice together, so prettily paired up, that you don’t notice the imagery. On Moh Lhean, WHY? veer from the clichéd – “take this lonesome token/and toss it in the ocean” – to the overwrought – “hand like a crumpled newborn foal” – to the downright bizarre – “I hide in your pores like a puss.” Serengeti balanced the seedy, surreal and sublime on their underrated 2016 collaboration Testarossa, so I had hoped for a little proactive evolution in Wolf’s lyrics. While tweeness does take a backseat here – in 2008 Wolf sung about emptying a wasp from his sock – the similes are still a bit much.

And yet the whole thing is sonically gorgeous. Rarely does this kind of imaginative, lushly arranged art-pop exist anymore. Moh Lhean harks back to the richness of the late 2000s when Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, Yeasayer’s All Hour Cymbals, of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna…, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup and Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca were piped through tinny iPod headphones. It may not reach those heights, but I can’t help thinking of that time, which was genuinely joyous for the teenage me.

We’re hardened to affected-but-beautiful music in 2017. Songcraft as good as this easily excused bad slam poetry in 2008 and that wasp lyric is proof. Lord knows Dave Longstreth said some elaborate nonsense on ‘The Bride’ and Ezra Koenig on ‘M79’, not to mention Kevin Barnes on everything, but we loved them regardless. And why shouldn’t we feel the same now about Yoni Wolf?

‘One Mississippi’ tumbles through delicate rhythms and harmonised whistling. After a real life health scare, Wolf vows to “submit to whatever it is in control” amidst a choir of reversed yelps and whimpers. He sounds rapt rather than resigned and the voices rise to a kind of ecstatic chaos before petering out to echo that planned surrender. In contrast, ‘The Water’ rolls along like a wagon, steady and reliable, while ‘Proactive Evolution’, chockfull of flutes and frog guiros, is so compellingly arranged, it’ll be taught in composition classes by 2020. On the slow, contemplative ‘The Barely Blur’, guest Son Lux swaps his usual bombast for a light orchestral touch and brings things to a fine close.

Perhaps we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater in the 2010s. If so, it’s taken us a good seven years to realise. Embarrassed by the lyrical extravagance of our adolescent tastes, we moved on to cooler, trimmer things and so did the artists. But that music was – and is – great. WHY?’s brand of excess ought to be not abandoned, but embraced.

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Pitchfork 77

The end of WHY? had never been too far from Yoni Wolf’s thoughts. On 2008’s Alopecia, Wolf brought his finest album to a peak by confessing to “coffin rehearsal” and ended it with his neck in a telephone cord noose. He repeated the trick on Mumps, etc.’s closer “As a Card,” and it felt like a grim confirmation of WHY?’s suicide note—Wolf spent most of it airing out his most noxious personal baggage and speaking about his “rap career” like a job from which he was begging to get fired so he wouldn’t have to quit. With nothing left to burn—himself included—Wolf commissioned WHY? fans for inspiration and wrote about their social media pages on Golden Tickets. Four years later, there isn’t a lot of fight left in WHY?—and yet, the project sounds completely rejuvenated for that very reason on Moh Lhean.

The remarkable thing about WHY? is that they neither needed a return to form nor a total reinvention. To the same degree Mumps, etc. turned Wolf’s strengths—excessive candor, a keen ear for melody—into indefensible liabilities, Moh Lhean expands on the quiet inventiveness of Alopecia’s less-heralded companion album Eskimo Snow. Previously, “post-rock” just meant “hip-hop” for WHY?, but they took on the late-’90s Chicago sense of the term on Eskimo Snow, favoring neatly layered guitars, mallet percussion, mixed time signatures, and exquisite production values alongside Wolf’s layering of obtuse metaphors and lurid self-disclosure.

If the genre-agnosticism of WHY? is no longer novel, it’s still stunningly unique. The arrangements are dazzling in their coherence, especially given the diversity of instrumentation and textures whizzing throughout. The most striking aspect of Moh Lhean is how beautiful it is, even more so since this is their first self-produced album since 2003’s Oaklandazulasylum, one of the definitive documents of the Anticon’s confrontational prog-hop. But Moh Lhean is built to withstand any live show where the triggers and synths malfunction. Acoustic guitar plays a surprising leading role in songs that could be covered as a sturdy blues (“This Ole King”), steely folk (“The Water”) and a straight-up power ballad (“George Washington”).

Unlike the pointedly organic Eskimo Snow, Moh Lhean contrasts all of its lush sounds with brash drum programming that mimics the ungainly motion of the human body, shifting in and out of rhythm with intricate math-rock layering or juddering non-quantized beats. Of course, these are the kind of playing fields where Wolf’s unconventional vocals best operate. Though he’s long proven capable of carrying a tune, Wolf’s still no one’s idea of a pretty vocalist. His imperfections—the odd timbral grain of his high notes, his taste for self-deprecation (“I’d be white, weak and blind/the opposite of oxen”)—provide the edge even though Moh Lhean is anything but belligerent.

Wolf underwent a non-specific “health scare” during the past few years and calls Moh Lhean a “breakup album.” No longer psychosexual neuroses personified, Wolf exhibits a kind of post-traumatic calm, using situations as an opportunity to reflect on how to love and be present. Moh Lhean is rife with scenes that raise the possibility of WHY? having been a covert emo band all along—watching shooting stars in the parking lot, writing love letters from the road, sitting in a boat with his brother after a hospital trip. Past albums relied on the shock value of confession for payoff, but Wolf trusts the emotional contours of his delivery to express the state of being in a moment across in concise, affecting phrases like “This one thing,/There is no other,” or, “I’m on fire,” or, “I’ve got to submit to whatever it is in control.”

Artistic restraint is a new concept for WHY? and it’s understandable if Moh Lhean as a whole feels slightly tentative at points—two of its ten tracks are interludes no more than a few seconds, the second of which serves as a preface to “George Washington”: “I wrote a song called ‘The Longing Is All’ instead of calling you/I’d hoped that’d solve me.” Such a line would’ve sounded like an admission of defeat on Mumps, etc., which didn’t lack for lyrics that ruminated on the futility of music. But on Moh Lhean, it’s indicative of a promising new outlook. With his health and his band fully recovered, Wolf is starting to realize what matters with the clarity of someone who’s seen a glimpse of the beyond.

Drowned In Sound 70

Why?'s trajectory can largely be traced by frontman Yoni Wolf's desire to move away from his hip-hop inclined roots from Why?'s earliest and previous band cLOUDDEAD's material. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, Wolf has never quite mastered the straight up indie-folk frontman, especially when his rapping on tracks like 'Good Friday' were so damn devastating. In the band's defence, it can't be easy following up one of the most passionately adored records of a decade and movement.

Wolf, however, finally seems to have taken the reigns on his excellent performances on the opening one-two gut punches of 'This Ole-King' and 'Proactive Evolution'. Wolf has always been an intriguing prospect, with a unique turn of phrase in all his work, however applying it to indie-rock hasn't always matched up, but on tracks such as 'George Washington', he seems to have finally mastered it. Meanwhile, there are more hooks to be found in Wolf's re-assured performance here, such as on the pretty catchy chorus to 'One Mississippi'.

Textually, Why? have always been a fascinating project, with his brother Josiah Wolf and Doug McDirmaid providing an always intriguing backing up rhythm section. Moh Lhean, however, sees the band take on a more ambient role, with keys and pianos especially important as seen on John Lennon-esque finale 'The Barely Blur' making Why?'s latest a dreamier affair, easy and pleasurable enough to get lost in.

There is, however, a tendency for this drifting to get a bit lost in the clouds in places. While Why? are certainly one of the most unique outfits out there, their sound is now pretty familiar and established, so there is a nagging feeling that we and they are treading water in their material. Nothing really disappoints here, but to the same extent, not much leaps out of the speakers and rings around one's sub-conscious. While Moh Lhean's relatively short running time means it never outstays its welcome, it also, conversely, feels a little light in places to really be too memorable.

As aforementioned, a lot of this probably has to do with struggling under the weight of having a bonafide classic in your back catalogue. Moh Lhean is an enjoyable record and there's plenty of great moments to be found here, it's just anyone who loved that almost decade-old behemoth by now aren't necessarily going to find anything really thrilling here. However, perhaps more importantly, Why?'s fifth record seems more of a sure-footing; a reminder that this band that at one point was so exciting, is still able to surprise and move you even a decade on from their crowning achievement. Watch this space, Why? ain't done just yet.