Color me uninformed, but last I heard Why? was a “he” (as in, Yoni Wolf), not a “they” (as in: and backing band). Yeah, okay, I knew Wolf had brought along a few friends to help him out—namely brother Josiah Wolf, Doug McDiarmid, Mark Erickson, and Fog’s Andrew Broder—but I figured it a situation not unlike the Mountain Goats or, say, Br. Danielson. So I’ll be damned if the stellar opener of Why?’s latest effort, Alopecia, doesn’t knock some sense into me. The composition adamantly submits Why?’s status as a “they” and impresses with a sublime mix of poetic non-sequiturs and velvet instrumentation. Yoni Wolf, an acoustic guitar, and a drum machine this ain’t.

Not to say Wolf’s eccentricities are not still intact. He applies the same deadpan, clothespin-over-nose sing-speak we have heard since his cLOUDEAD days, promptly smacking us upside the head with an opening statement that sticks to the frontal lobe like the rotten smell of a still-smoldering car wreck: “I’m not a ladies man / I’m a landmine / Filming my own fake death.” This launches the song into a mildly convoluted meditation on suicide, but the stark allusion to self-destructive tendencies is useful in that it so effectively sets the tone for the rest of the song, and, on a larger scale, the album that follows.

Vaguely violent musings aside, it’s the startling space created by the composition behind him that’s so arresting. “Vowels Pt. 2” is a melancholy late night stroll through a murky swamp, the fleshed out sound of Why? the band enabling such an atmosphere, filling in the spaces between its frontman’s warped consonance with liquid bass hits and faintly whispered guitar lines. And Wolf is right at home, invigorated even, as he puts on his best impression of a drunken Jesus, stumbling, at times brilliantly, over an understated, propulsive soundscape until ascending into a surreal hook: “Cheery A / Cheery E…” A bizarre suicide note, scrawled eerily on cellophane with a sharpie reveals itself as a poignant pop song in its final minute, Wolf still crooning sorrowful nonsense and dancing around silly puns but sidestepping his own depression if only for a moment. By the time the “U” hits and the blanket of Yo La Tengo-esque distortion falls over the track, shivers have been induced and goose bumps raised. This is acutely affecting stuff, an existentialist lullaby that thoroughly legitimizes Why?’s claim to a more fitting pronoun, to a full-fledged and genuinely fascinating band, official or not.

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