Anticon collective and cLOUDDEAD member Yoni Wolf’s main project, Why? has evolved from a solo four-track endeavour to a full band. Alopecia is the medical term for hair loss, and I can only assume that the term is a clever metaphor for the underlying anxiety seeping into the lyrics of Why?’s third album proper. Wolf’s idiosyncratic emo-rap-folk delivery is slathered in even more idiosyncratic arrangements while he deadpans though observational alliteration and near-rhyme mouthfuls to elicit a sort of painfully hilarious self-pity. Though his voice is not unlike a hip-hop John K. Samson, Wolf’s nasal articulation assures that lyrical nuggets like “I curse the past six months I’ve been hiding behind a moustache” (“The Hollows”) do not go unnoticed. With strange instrumentation such as apathetic basslines (“These Few Presidents”) and Byrds-like guitars (“Fatalist Palmistry”) Alopecia is the kind of album that reveals itself a few strands at a time.

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