Why? / Elephant Eyelash

Anticon

What you’ve got here is something grand. Something bold. Something to trumpet proudly as the future of something that hasn’t yet happened. Something (gasp!) to be excited about. What you have here is Elephant Eyelash, the brand-new brilliant album from Why? At the very least one should ask oneself, “why not?” Elephant Eyelash is a beautifully realized work, a smile-twisted opus of bright colors, dark corners and fearless moves by head architect Yoni Wolf (cLOUDDEAD, Reaching Quiet, Hymie’s Basement). After six years of treating Why? as a solo project, Wolf has fashioned Why? into a full-fledged band. The Sanddollars EP, released in May, presents the group working through a short set of miniature oeuvres, but Elephant Eyelash dishes up the real deal: twelve gorgeously rendered tracks of jangly psych-rock, folk-hop and peculiar pop. Whether inhabiting the persona of a lovelorn crooner or warp-mouthed Dylanesque poet, self-deprecating, soft-singing shy guy or loudmouthed macho type, Wolf wraps unforgettable lyrical imagery around grooves powered by an arsenal of instruments: guitars, turntable, piano, glockenspiel, pedal steel, pots, pans and more. Pavement, Neutral Milk Hotel, krautrock and dub are all channeled here, but the mix never gets too heady. Rather, it’s Wolf’s trademark delivery, half-smirk, half-grin, that reminds us that it’s the inconsistencies that make life so damn addicting.

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