I suspect this review will be full of misinterpretations, but trying to figure out what members of Oakland's Anticon Collective are rambling about is part of the fun. On one hand, it's refreshing to hear these eccentrics dressed like their tyke selves in the early 80s throw together hip-hop and folkie-pop like found-art objects strewn in dumpsters and attics. It was quite a sight watching an Anticon showcase at San Francisco's Amoeba Music back in 2001, where the "indie kids" in patch 'n' retro badge-clad hoodies bobbed their heads in the front, while many b-boys stood in the back with crossed arms or passed through the record bins as if listening to a PA'd CD. Audience polarization can be a sign of artistic strength, but what happens when an artist's idiosyncrasies and self-indulgences are accepted as qualities of predictable freaks? What more could be expected of him or her?
When Yoni Wolf emerged as Why?, he was respected as a b-boy who never raps and is often with a beat-up, acoustic guitar in his hand. His nasal whine makes his scribblings in a public bus commute notebooks like "Or in the cramped, corpse-like blue of an airplane bathroom" in the Piano Man-fashioned ballad, "Sick 2 Think" somehow charming and digestible. His EP, Sanddollars, contains more weirdness-for-weirdness' sake ditties that narrate the lives of sad sacks or sing of existential angst tuneful enough to entertain elementary school assemblies. The vaguely Brian Wilson-esque harmonies manage to keep the listener grounded as the entertaining gobbledygook passes by.
The strongest tracks begin and end the record; both raise half-drunk pints to hopeless dreamers and has-beens. Opener "Miss Ohio's Nameless" tells of a beauty contestant with the voice of an angel who gets some Internet buzz, but still doesn't go beyond open-mic night and the funeral home. As expected, this piano 'n' brushed snare ballad for any homecoming dance just had to be introduced by some Deadbeat-style digital rainfall and random TV chatter. Closer "Mutant John" is about (I humbly assess) an artist's one and only fan or mutantjohn@hotmail.com. Here Why? laments "And I've been living like a (what sounds like "bend") of ones since like my second and final Tupperware party" and "But then I've been giving a flying fuck about my melancholcity." Quite clever. And then he veers into Weezer-seque whimpering. It's difficult to know whether to laugh at or pity the bloke.
The rest of Sanddollars is all very cute and well-orchestrated piano-pop; something to bring home for ma. Wolf describes the ATL that "smells like dead possums," where his friend found a dead butterfly and surprised him by placing it on his keyboard during sound check in the Beach Boys-fashioned hymn "Next Atlanta". Lines that mention buying 20 bucks of Cheerios and glow-in-the-dark Legos somehow figure in. "Pantone Cyan" and "500 Fingernails" both glide on a Neu-ish motorik beat with verses shoving choruses, while the title track is prances around the Maypole until the joyous irony wears off for most hepcats and we're left with Wolf dancing with himself for hours on end, no matter that everyone went home.
