Name: Moh Lhean
Brand: Why?

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

jnr222cd

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2017-03-03

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

714270690815

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Total Cap

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Why?

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Joyful Noise

The final words sung on the sixth album by Why? are an apt place to begin: "Hold on, what's going on?" Because while there's much familiar about the oddly named Moh Lhean - mastermind Yoni Wolf's sour-sweet croon, his deadpan poet's drawl and ear for stunningly fluid psych-pop-folk-whatever arrangement - a great deal has changed in the four years that've passed since 2012's Mumps, Etc., an LP that honed the band's orchestral precision and self-deprecating swagger to a fine point. It's significant that this is the first fully home-recorded Why? album since the project's 2003 debut. Made mostly in Wolf's studio and co-produced by his brother Josiah, the result is obsessive, of course, but also intimate, and flush with warmth and looseness. But the biggest transformation is a bit subtler. After years of eying his world, in part, with a cynical squint, Wolf here learns a new mode. While Moh Lhean never stoops to outright optimism, it chronicles our hero finding peace in the unknowing, trading the wry smirk for a holy shrug, and looking past corporeal pain for something more cosmic and, rest assured, equally weird. A low tone opens the album on This Ole King as acoustic pluck and upright bass form a Western bedrock beneath Wolf’s fragile voice. But as the song pushes on, the playing gets brighter and the vocal becomes a mantra-like hum inspired by Ali Farka Touré’s blues, before rolling into a second part rich with chiming keys and twisting harmony— Brian Wilson’s kaleidoscopic vision of pop. Moh Lhean’s gorgeously psychedelic closer, The Barely Blur with Son Lux, puzzles over the nature of existence. But rather than leave us with the macabre chill of death, as many a Why? LP has, the song dissolves into the infinite—the sound of the Big Bang.

LP+ - Limited Blue Vinyl with Download.

Moh Lhean

Music GB