The Pelican’s Perch

How in the world do I still have readers? I’ve been a pathetic music blogger lately. I’ve been in a rut due to my lingering sickness. I’ve been super busy with LemonDrop as we’ve been prepping for the releases of our first two albums, The Verbs self-titled debut and Jimmy Spits’ Leaps and Bounds. Saying I’m excited for LemonDrop to finally be releasing something could be the understatement of the year. But I haven’t forgotten about you my fine Perch readers. I honestly expected to check my stats today and see that only five or so people visited, but boy was I wrong. You cats are loyal and I can’t thank you enough. I’m busy as ever, but I’ll try my best to get back in the blogging rhythm of things and post a lot. I swear. Now for what I’ve been listening to the most lately.

Why? has always been a band I love, but can’t put my finger on why exactly. With every release, they balance the weird with the beautiful, the choppy, the gloomy, and basically any other description you can think of, all while keeping pop songs hidden underneath it all. There’s always been an experimental hip-hop feel to their music, with most verses falling in the speak/sing style only to burst into some sort of catchy chorus.

I’m falling all over my own words just trying to describe them, but that’s really no surprise to me. It’s near impossible to successfully describe Why?, so I’ll just talk about their latest release instead. Alopecia is nowhere near the leap that Elephant Eyelash was from Oaklandazulasylum. Elephant Eyelash was Why’s maturation into truly great songwriters. They went from writing ok songs with strange, but great lyrics, to writing great songs with the same strange lyrics. It was one of my favorite albums of that year and remains one I frequently turn to today.

So, my excitement over Alopecia was understandable. I kept my expectations low and found another gem of an album, albeit a much mellower, slightly darker gem this go around. “The Hollows” is the first single from this album and would fit easily on Elephant Eyelash with its driving chorus full of ooh’s and aah’s and a great bridge. It seemed every song on their previous album had great bridge parts. “The Vowels Pt. 2″ starts the album nicely, but overall those two songs are really the main representatives of Why’s musical past. The rest of the album is uniquely Why’s, but Alopecia finds them sitting on the synth drones and pounding out slow, epic drums parts much more frequently than ever before. That’s not a bad thing by any means, I just found it to be less of a pop album than their usual style, and more along the experimental side of things.

I can tell I haven’t blogged in a while just by reading what I’ve written so far, but honestly, if I’ve confused you, which I guarantee I probably have, just take a listen to a few of my favorites from Alopecia and maybe you’ll find the strange tunes of Why? surprisingly satisfying. I know I do.

Alopecia comes out March 11th on Anticon.

1. The Vowels Pt. 2
2. Good Friday
3. These Few Presidents
4. The Hollows [mp3]
   
5. Song Of The Sad Assassin
6. Gnashville
7. Fatalist Palmistry
8. The Fall Of Mr. Fifths
9. Brook & Waxing
10. A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under [mp3]
    
11. Twenty Eight
12. Simeon’s Dilemma
13. By Torpedo Or Crohn’s
14. Exegesis

Super Bonus:
By Torpedo Or Crohn’s (a remix by Dntel)(from the Hollows 7″)

Myspace / Anticon