Album artwork for Alopecia by Why?

Why?'s album Alopecia. Available here on 10th Anniversary Edition Limited Tri-Color Edition LP with Bonus 7", Standard LP, CD and Cassette.

Two years after wooing critics with their beloved Elephant Eyelash, Why? returns, third LP in hand. As expected, the band—Yoni Wolf, Josiah Wolf, Doug McDiarmid—continues its calculated blitzkrieg on that self-made jangle-rap, indie pop 'n' roll genre, but the stakes are raised. The boys returned to their Midwest roots for Alopecia, hunkering down in Minneapolis's Third Ear studio and inducting a pair of venerable big guns into the band: Fog mastermind Andrew Broder and bassist Mark "Bear" Erickson. Throwing their samplers to the wind (mostly), Why? recorded live as a five-piece. By the time the core trio returned to Oakland (where Thee More Shallows' D. Kessler engineered a final session), they'd amassed their most immediate and cohesive batch of songs to date. Throughout Alopecia, Why? further pushes the edges of its sound, mastering mood on the time-shifting "The Song of the Sad Assassin," going ghostly with Kessler on a textured death rattle called "Gnashville," and inflating the warped buoyancy of Elephant Eyelash via "Fatalist Palmistry." Likewise, Wolf has honed his poems, evidenced by "The Fall of Mr. Fifths"—a twisted rap hinting at an inner Mr. Hyde—the sleepy existentialism of "Brook & Waxing," the oral illustration offered by "A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under" and the complex cadences found in "Twenty-Eight." Before Alopecia is brought to its eerie end (the suicide-probing outro, "Exegesis") we're given one more offering of reverse rap braggadocio. "By Torpedo or Crohn's" grooves like a mid-'90s gangsta BBQ jam and peaks with a recurring line from Alopecia: "While I'm alive/I'll feel alive." It's a fitting final thought, even for an album as complex as this—that the perfect antithesis to the blunt finality of death is nothing more than claiming the lifeblood that is already yours.

LP+ - 10th Anniversary Edition. Limited to 1,000 Copies on Tri-Color LP with Bonus 7".

LP - Standard LP.

CD - Standard CD.

Tape - Standard Cassette.

Why?

Alopecia

Anticon
Album artwork for Alopecia by Why?
LP

$22.99

10th Anniversary Edition

Black
Released 08/07/2018Catalog Number

JNR270lp

Learn more
Album artwork for Alopecia by Why?
CD

$13.99

Released 08/17/2018Catalog Number

JNR270cd

Learn more
Why?

Alopecia

Anticon
Album artwork for Alopecia by Why?
LP

$22.99

10th Anniversary Edition

Black
Released 08/07/2018Catalog Number

JNR270lp

Learn more
Album artwork for Alopecia by Why?
CD

$13.99

Released 08/17/2018Catalog Number

JNR270cd

Learn more

Why?'s album Alopecia. Available here on 10th Anniversary Edition Limited Tri-Color Edition LP with Bonus 7", Standard LP, CD and Cassette.

Two years after wooing critics with their beloved Elephant Eyelash, Why? returns, third LP in hand. As expected, the band—Yoni Wolf, Josiah Wolf, Doug McDiarmid—continues its calculated blitzkrieg on that self-made jangle-rap, indie pop 'n' roll genre, but the stakes are raised. The boys returned to their Midwest roots for Alopecia, hunkering down in Minneapolis's Third Ear studio and inducting a pair of venerable big guns into the band: Fog mastermind Andrew Broder and bassist Mark "Bear" Erickson. Throwing their samplers to the wind (mostly), Why? recorded live as a five-piece. By the time the core trio returned to Oakland (where Thee More Shallows' D. Kessler engineered a final session), they'd amassed their most immediate and cohesive batch of songs to date. Throughout Alopecia, Why? further pushes the edges of its sound, mastering mood on the time-shifting "The Song of the Sad Assassin," going ghostly with Kessler on a textured death rattle called "Gnashville," and inflating the warped buoyancy of Elephant Eyelash via "Fatalist Palmistry." Likewise, Wolf has honed his poems, evidenced by "The Fall of Mr. Fifths"—a twisted rap hinting at an inner Mr. Hyde—the sleepy existentialism of "Brook & Waxing," the oral illustration offered by "A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under" and the complex cadences found in "Twenty-Eight." Before Alopecia is brought to its eerie end (the suicide-probing outro, "Exegesis") we're given one more offering of reverse rap braggadocio. "By Torpedo or Crohn's" grooves like a mid-'90s gangsta BBQ jam and peaks with a recurring line from Alopecia: "While I'm alive/I'll feel alive." It's a fitting final thought, even for an album as complex as this—that the perfect antithesis to the blunt finality of death is nothing more than claiming the lifeblood that is already yours.

LP+ - 10th Anniversary Edition. Limited to 1,000 Copies on Tri-Color LP with Bonus 7".

LP - Standard LP.

CD - Standard CD.

Tape - Standard Cassette.