Celebrating their tenth anniversary as a band, Why? - by turns hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio and Berkeley, California - can now reasonably claim to be one of the great cult success stories of the last decade, but were they ever to stop and wonder quite why it was that they hadn’t crossed over more widely, you’d have to admit that the answer would be obvious. Their unusual blend of styles won’t be for everyone, mixing typical indie rock sounds with touches of alternative, abstract hip hop and, on most recent record Mumps, Etc., elements of dream pop, too; add to that the downright zany lyricism of charismatic frontman Yoni Wolf and you realise why I used the world cult earlier. Their most recent UK jaunt, two years ago, was prefaced by Wolf in a YouTube video that had him lifting weights, doing press-ups and going for a run in the “freezing sleet.” That’s a level of energy that he replicated on stage, too, with shows at London’s Electric Ballroom and Manchester’s Methodist Central Hall rapturously reviewed by critics. Wolf is capable of flitting between outright sincerity, emotional intensity and high-octane boisterousness in the blink of an eye, and so diverse is the instrumental talent of his bandmates, they typically match him all the way.
Adrian Belew
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