Posts Tagged ‘ why ’

Sled Island Report! WHY?

July 3, 2010
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Photography by Me

After Mico, we hung around Dicken’s Pub for, what I considered, the main event of our first night in Calgary… Why? Now, I consider myself a casual fan of Why?, in that I’m vaguely familiar with their songs, one or two showing up on a mixtape here & there, which is more than I can say for Mico, right?

The air was getting thick as pub goers prepared for one of their faves to start…

The anticipation was so thick, you could stick it a fork in it and eat it!

Finally, why took the stage!  They led off with this new song which I wasn’t very familiar with, but it was an epic 20 to 30 minute song that went, “check, check, aaaah, aaah, check, check, la la la la la la laaaa, check, check” followed by random instruments blaring out, then more checks, ahs, and beef carpagios (or whatever they are called). It was pretty magical & pretty avant-garde.  I’m not sure the kids in the audience was getting it though.

For the final 30 minutes of their set, they played what appeared to be audience faves as everyone seemed to know the lyrics and lip-synced right along…. with LOTS of passion.

Now, I wouldn’t have pegged a small pub filled with a couple hundred people listening to a band like Why? to be one prone to crowd-surfing, but not only did some dude in the audience get his 5 sec surf on, so did Mr. Yoni and the crowd was happy to play along!

Small fact: yoni is tantric massage for “vagina”.

The crowd was happy, we were having a good time, life was good…

All-in-all, solid set, fun, very white-indieboy-friendly “hip hop”, though, in all honesty, for some reason, Yoni’s voice sounded an awful lot like Weird Al Yankovic’s.  Once that thought bubble popped in my head, I’ll admit, it was hard to shake out.  Considering I didn’t watch Yoni do his thing (I was focused more on the dude who looked like a roadie earlier, but turned out to be the bassist, he was IN IT, oh man, he felt every. single. note. he. played!  WOOT!  Loved that guy), he was partially blocked from my view, the image in my head was allll Weird Al.

Next time though, I hope they finish with that new check-check song, I think that would blow our collective audience minds…

Cheers,
Tsuru

Breaking up & Jet Lag by Josiah Wolf (you know, from WHY?)…

March 3, 2010
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Photography by gabriele chiapparini

The Violent Femmes once sang, “breaking up, is easy to do” and maybe in a few cases that’s true, say, when she goes crazy & tries to run you over.  Not a difficult decision there, though even in that situation, getting your shit out of the house certainly won’t be easy.  Trust me, I know.

In fact, I’ll go on record to say that breaking up is hard to do.  It’s a necessity though, when a relationship is over, any relationship, and can’t be repaired or evolve into a new kind of relationship, sometimes you just got say “goodbye”.  Life’s too short to spend it in misery, eh?

Now, before you start wondering if I’m talking about Baby & I, ease up, we are stronger than ever, sickeningly so to many people (and to anyone who winds up in our company, I apologize.

Breaking up is important though.  We should all go through it at least once or thrice, it’s a great opportunity to “move forward”, “start fresh”, and “reconnect with & rediscover yourself”.  For the music lover, break ups are fantastic.  Some of the best albums ever have come out of the lonely misery of an artist!  Hell, my favourite Beck album, Sea Change, is miserable goodness!

Well, apparently Mr. Josiah Wolf (of WHY?) found himself at the end of an 11-year relationship.  Add in a move from California to the midwest, and suddenly we’ve got ourselves Jet Lag, a wonderfully intimate & beautiful autobiographical-feeling break-up album.

Even the cover art has a “yep, here’s me” thing going on.  Muscially, it’s folk/pop/etc-ish, really well crafted, lots of playing with timing, a few interesting layering bits, and what not, making it a really interesting listen on that alone.  But I think lyrically is where this album will carry it’s weight over the long haul.  There are lots of I’s and me’s and you really feel like he’s actually talking to you, spilling his guts for you.  Take the lyrics called out in the label write-up “I guess it’s goodbye now/Did I guess wrong?/’I guess it’s goodbye’/Is a broken man’s song.”  You feel it, he IS a broken man, this is his therapy session.

I don’t know, it’s sweet, sad, and highly visual.   For all you coming in for a side-WHY? thing, you may be disappointed.  Turn that shit out of your mind, and let Josiah get some thoughts & observations off his chest.  You’ll be thankful you did.

1. The Trailer And The Truck
2. Master Cleanse (California)
3. The Opposite Of Breathing
4. The New Car
5. Skull In The Ice
6. The Apart Meant
7. That Kind Of Man
8. Ohioho
9. Is The Body Hung
10. In The Seam
11. Gravity Defied
12. The One Sign

Some Wolf love: Myspace | BUY!

Cheers,

Tsuru