Why?‘s Eskimo Snow (Anticon) was recorded the same time their Alopecia album was made, and apparently it was meant to be released as two separate albums. You can consider them flip sides of the same coin, or just two albums done at the same time, but for you it means another collection of Why? songs to dig and get emotional with.
Their brand of anti-folk at times comes off like the kind of sentiment one doesn’t expect for a man to sing, but here it is, songs about self-reflection (“These Hands”), occasionally longing for days gone by (“Even The Good Wood Gone”), or the mysterious of a confusing world and live as one tries to understand ones purpose on this planet (“Eskimo Snow”). Or if it’s not anti-folk, it can be outsider country, or loner blues, but isn’t some of the best country music made by self-proclaimed outsiders and lonely bluesmen looking for a sip, scent, and song? In a track like “In The Shadows Of My Embrace”, Yoni Wolf sings with innocent openness “I conquered my own childhood silence and now the world is my lit confessional marquee/but it’d take a busload of high school soccer girls to wash those hospitals off me”, only for him to make more revelations that he knows he shouldn’t but “you got to yell something that you’ll never tell nobody”, and that is exactly what he has done on Eskimo Snow and the many albums and singles he has released over the years. It may be as effective as confessing your secrets to a wall or tree, and at least under the guise of Why? there are many walls and trees to bump into in one’s life.
This Is Book's Music 