Why? – Eskimo Snow

Eskimo Snow reconfirms something already established through Why?’s previous full length effort, Alopecia: Yoni Wolf has a truly gifted mind for writing songs. It’s unfortunate, but Yoni’s nasally whine somewhat overshadows his talents for complimentary arrangements and flushing out gorgeous melody through thin layers of instrumentation. He also plays the piano beautifully, but that again is often times an afterthought to the shock value of his occasionally twisted, self-deprecating lyrical content. Yoni teeters on this narrow line where he can either be perceived as comedic or disturbing and in some instances he can even be considered both.

A perfect example of this can be taken from “Into The Shadows of My Embrace”. In it, there’s this line of, “I think my upstairs neighbor hears me masturbating.” He also doesn’t try to remove himself from the social faux pas inherent in such a statement. In fact, he embraces it later in the song by going on to sing, “saying all this in public should make me feel funny, but you got to yell something out you never tell nobody.” Yoni also oversteps self-deprecation into what can fairly be considered self-loathing. This is evident through the song “One Rose” where he sings , “I never saw my parents try to make a thing like me. In time in the bathroom mirror I learned to accept my body.” The sullen manner in which these words are softly delivered only reinforces the notion of having a negative body image.

Yoni’s lyrics come across as stream of consciousness at times, but also seem too well chosen to truly be spontaneous. Speaking in generalities, the words he selects to sing not only evoke, but continually challenge the listener throughout the course of repeated listens. That is something not easy accomplished and a large contributor to Why?’s overall appeal.

A trend immediately noticeable throughout Eskimo Snow is that Yoni makes more of a conscious effort to sing. He still kind of raps like he has on their previous releases, but even when he does there’s melody heavily incorporated into his cadence and it’s much more discernable than it is in most traditional hip-hop. In that regard he’s a lot more Jeff Mangum than he is Mos Def. Like the former Neutral Milk Hotel leader, he crams a lot of words into an ongoing melody and, unlike the Black On Both Sides creator, doesn’t try speaking at a pace to keep rhythm with the beat backing him.

Eskimo Snow isn’t nearly as experimental as Alopecia in terms of the range of sound used. From start to finish it plays almost entirely within the boundaries of the fundamentals – guitars, pianos, and drums. With that being said, it delivers a much more organic sound than they have in the past. An instrument of particular interest for this effort is the acoustic guitar and it’s always plucked, never strummed. Two songs that flourish within this framework are “Berkeley By Hearseback” and the title track, “Eskimo Snow”. Granted, this album doesn’t exactly live up to the one that it follows, but there’s nothing on it not to like if Alopecia was found enjoyable.

Tagged as: Hip-hop

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