WHY?’s Wolf takes fresh approach for band’s offbeat new album
YONI Wolf had just wrapped a tour with WHY? celebrating the 10th anniversary of his band’s breakout album “Alopecia” last winter when he realised he needed to hit the reset button.
“I was just like, ‘ OK, I need to start fresh,’” says Wolf, who had paused work on WHY?’s next album to tour. “I didn’t like every night singing that whole album. It just didn’t feel right. I mean, it was fun. But I’m not a nostalgia guy.”
Wolf’s solution? Shave his head.
Before he went through with it, he told filmmaker Miles JorisPeyrafitte, who was working on a visual component for WHY?’s next album. The director, a Sundance special jury award winner who had randomly messaged Wolf on Instagram offering to collaborate, suggested that he film Wolf shaving his head for the project.
Wolf’s self-shaving is now immortalized in the experimental full-length visual version of WHY?’s just-released album “AOKOHIO.” (The title is a cheeky reference to Wolf’s home state of Ohio as well as his mental state.)
Like the film, which juxtaposes footage of Wolf singing to the camera with home movies and scenes featuring “Orphan Black’s” Tatiana Maslany, the record is a bit all over the place. Which is just as Wolf intended.
Rather than work on the 19-track album as a whole, Wolf wrote “AOKOHIO” as six multisong “movements,” inspired by the structure of Frank Zappa’s “We’re Only in It for the Money” and early Guided by Voices albums.
“I liked the idea of being able to sort of wrap up a section with a nice pretty bow and then move on,” says Wolf, who tried to finish one movement before starting on the next. Though, he admits, some bits date back as far as five years.
A handful of songs are over in 30 seconds, while others are more fully formed. Musically, they run the gamut: There’s shades of indie pop, hip-hop and glitchy electronica. Wolf sings, raps, talks and distorts his voice beyond recognition. Each movement has a centrepiece — such as the lumbering “Peel Free” or the infectious “Rock Candy” — and somehow, the disparate pieces manage to jell.
“I’ve always loved the way that songs go up against each other and finding a good way to assemble songs together,” Wolf says.
Like shaving his head, the approach — and the visual album — allowed Wolf to rethink his mindset toward writing and recording.
“I don’t want to work in the old way,” he says. “I want to have a new style of process to keep everything fresh.”