So Yoni Wolf sits at a grand piano and starts dryly rapping, his brother Josiah backing him up on a bass drum made of a guitar case with a tambourine taped to it. They start things out with a verse from their yet-to-be-recorded Why? album.
"Oh, to be born as anything but this...
...fruitless in the holster...
...it's scary how we always end up...
...it yields only drops like an unripe lemon...
...is your love but a ploy, like Bugs Bunny in drag?"
Soon the song veers from kick and rhyme into piano and croon, and a cozy group of a couple hundred people settled in for the last show from the Wolf brothers before they and the rest of the band that's a question go into the studio to record the follow up to 2009's Eskimo Snow.
"And he will always thirst like that. Yeah, he will thirst like that always."
New material was all over the hour-long set, but songs showed up from as early as 2005's Sanddollars EP, all performed in stripped down piano and homemade percussion arrangements, with Josiah picking up bass or guitar from song to song. The new stuff sounds new, but still fits into the Why? canon, equal parts dry wit and personal revelation (or narrative fiction), hip-hop cadence over acoustic guitar and beatboxing over piano making strange but intimate bedfellows.
It's got to be mentioned that the space at St. David's was visually and acoustically gorgeous, so definite thanks go to them for offering up their room for the evening. Also, the biggest ups to Transmission Austin, for putting the whole thing together. And of course thanks to the brothers Wolf, and the rest of the Why? clan. Thanks for a beautiful evening, and best of luck in the studio. Now I can't wait.
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