WHY?: "This Blackest Purse"

Out soon is Eskimo Snow, Yoni Wolf’s follow-up to Alopecia (2008), and we’re told it was recorded around the same time. We’re also informed that, in no certain terms, it’s a kind of companion to its immediate predecessor—as the press sheet presses, the “winter” to Alopecia‘s “summery” trawl through self-loathing and earnest masturbation. Maybe I just tried to make a joke: it takes a faithful leap to compare Alopecia to a time bright and breezy; I’ve always found it dense, confused, and humid, like a Midwest summer, which is never summery. And if first single “This Blackest Purse” is any sign, when Eskimo Snow is released in the fall it’ll be hard to imagine that extreme a seasonal divide between two albums both concerned so similarly and so voraciously with helplessness and dying—mostly turning that frustration on oneself—as they walk briskly away from WHY? as a spry, strange hip-hop project.

But I get the metaphor: “Purse” is larger than anything off Alopecia, colder too, and passively longing to be warm again; like a Midwest winter. Wolf’s said in a Pitchfork interview that the physical difference is essential to parsing the two albums into just that: two albums. He describes inviting more space into the placement of drum mics, playing live with a quintet and loosening up their precision, and, in turn, “This Blackest Purse” stretches out, purrs in deference to the details so much room affords. Piano keys clip and squish, an intimate, familiar sensation preceding a blurry call-and-answer from seemingly two rooms over. Wolf sweetly croaks, “What should these earnest hands be holding?” Um, everything? He’s sure goddamned trying—encouraging some cooing closeness, the only real way any of his lyrics can totally work, as wrenching voices yell in the background and the ringing synth noise, like the aftermath of a violin note, climaxes.

So this is cake and eating that cake, even when one knows that cake should not be eaten. This is also a good song, a good rock solid ballad, as big and sincere as that connotes, which is what WHY?’s been tending towards recently, anyway. Which means Eskimo Snow could be a total success: completing Alopecia‘s sound and realizing the past two years of WHY? as a resounding whole. That, or it may just continue to allow room for Wolf to push outward, to sing in grander colors, validating his melodrama as broadly as another question mark could tagged to his name.