WHY? The Well I Fell Into (Album Review)

Experimental Cleveland quartet’s eighth album release, their first in half a decade, takes its title from a line within third track ‘Brand New’, a shimmering summery pop song comprising a splendidly cathartic yet mature take on the impact of emotional turmoil, a recurring theme throughout this 14-song offering.

Decamping to Wisconsin with celebrated Americana producer Brian Joseph at the controls, frontman Yoni Wolf along with bandmates Josiah Wolf, Doug McDairmid and Andrew Broder, have painstakingly crafted a sprawling yet accessible collection of confessional but ultimately buoyant numbers, keeping the listener guessing throughout. With demarcation lines seemingly non-existent when putting the music to Yoni Wolf’s words, this all hands on deck approach delivers a rich vein of cerebral, lyrically dense, contemporary pop styles from hop-hop to country.

De-facto opener ‘Marigold’ comprises an elegiac and exceptionally raw break up song, the flowers in question contained within a painting created by the singer’s mother, given to his ex-partner with Wolf admitting “I’ve barely been in my body since Obama, is it karma this whole drama? now my home ain’t my home”...devastating! Chopsticks style piano leads into the slinky ‘G-dzillah G-dolah’, a deliciously languid double bass, eerily redolent of Walk On The Wild Side, slowly stretched out like a piece of cooling molten rock as the song slowly but surely opens out like a blooming Black-eyed Susan. Current single, ‘Jump’ finds Yoni surrendering to his most basic urges. Pieced together over a number of years and dragging itself along like it’s got lead in its boots, it’s the lead in Yoni’s pencil that’s causing him so much distress as he implores “I need a fucking jump, man”. Someone please put the fella out of his misery.

Drawing on a range of hired hands to further augment the WHY? sound, these sonic bells and whistles frequently take your breath away. Backing vocals on ‘Later at the Loon’ provide a startlingly impactful lift, also completely transforming ‘Nis(s)an Dreams (Pt1)’ into something so beautiful it wouldn’t feel out of place on a Til’ Tuesday album.

Possibly the real bastard son of Dean Friedman. 

Words by Michael Price

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