Anticon 0080
Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches/ the images out that hurt and connect. – W. H. Auden
In 2005, Why? — the indie arm of the hip-hop heavy Anticon Collective — released Elephant Eyelash, a loose-limbed lo-fi beauty of a record that swims in all the spaces in between. Part hip-hop, part surrealistic psychedelic swirl, part melodic indie semi-pop, part laptop-twiddling goodness, it crosses over into all territories and occupies none. Perhaps above all else, it’s a record packed to bursting with ideas and therefore a helluva hard record to follow-up.
Alopecia wastes no time in answering the bell and comes out swinging. Opening with a thick, punching beat and a thwacking chain, it sounds from second one more direct, focused, and aggressive than its predecessor. On the whole, it is, but all is not normalized here, and what the record lacks in sonic surprise it more than makes up for in lyrical bite. Frontman/leader Yoni Wolf knocks you off your perch immediately (‘I’m not a ladies’ man/ I’m a landmine, filming my own fake death.’), and you can spend the rest of the record trying to get back to predictable ground. From Bukowski-style lows (‘Sucking dick for drink tickets/ at the free bar/ at my cousin’s bat mitzvah’) to frank observation (‘In Berlin I saw/ two men fuck/ in the dark corner/ of a basketball court—/ just the slight jingle/ of pocket change pulsing’) to wry self-deflation (‘My fear of the bear at/ Showbiz Pizza when I was six/ was overwhelming/ and not dissimilar to this’), to zen-like beauty (‘Shine a flashlight in a hatbox/ and spin an empty oyster shell/ and celebrate the hollows’) to what passes for a profession of love on this record (‘Even though I haven’t/ seen you in years,/ yours is a funeral/ I’d fly to from anywhere’) Yoni finds the images and words that startle with their confessional perversity, their beauty, and their unpredictability and delivers them all in a talk-sung patter that drifts between straight rap and (occasionally) outright singing.
