Why? - Moh Lhean (New CD)

The final words sung on the sixth album by Why? are an apt place to begin: “”Hold on, what”s going on?”” Because while there”s much familiar about the oddly named Moh Lhean – mastermind Yoni Wolf”s sour-sweet croon, his deadpan poet”s drawl and ear for stunningly fluid psych-pop-folk-whatever arrangement – a great deal has changed in the four years that”ve passed since 2012”s Mumps, Etc., an LP that honed the band”s orchestral precision and self-deprecating swagger to a fine point. It”s significant that this is the first fully home-recorded Why? album since the project”s 2003 debut. Made mostly in Wolf”s studio and co-produced by his brother Josiah, the result is obsessive, of course, but also intimate, and flush with warmth and looseness. But the biggest transformation is a bit subtler. After years of eying his world, in part, with a cynical squint, Wolf here learns a new mode. While Moh Lhean never stoops to outright optimism, it chronicles our hero finding peace in the unknowing, trading the wry smirk for a holy shrug, and looking past corporeal pain for something more cosmic and, rest assured, equally weird.

• This Ole King

• Proactive Evolution

• Easy

• January February March

• One Mississippi

• The Longing Is All

• George Washington

• The Water

• Consequence of Nonaction

• The Barely Blur