Live: Why?, Islington Academy, London
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
If you too felt that Mumps. Etc. didn’t set the critical hype machine ablaze to the same degree as Why?'s 2008 opus Alopecia, tonight’s feverish show in London wouldn’t betray it.
People here tonight adore the material, and inhabit every cloying syllable – throwing themselves behind each song with full commitment; even the wintery, songwriter turns from the awkwardly placed Eskimo Snow receive the full-blooded sing-along treatment.
Yoni’s performance – wherever he happens to be pitched between his diametric poles of straight up rap and designs towards piano balladry – is never less than singular, and fully conducive to the cultish reception which he commands. And while the material of Mumps. Etc. might be accused of retread or even self-parody on record, tonight it reveals itself to be the best, and most effective blend of reconciling the disparate parts of the band’s sound which they’ve swung through over the last few LPs, melding melodic movement with brooding rhythm.
The best airings of earlier material are those which have evolved to fit within the mature synthesis of Why?’s varied identities. An early performance of ‘Good Friday’ is a set highlight – with the tempo ground to a crawl, each verse’s arrangement swells with a gathering sense of menace; the song’s riff only occasionally breaking through the gaps of its low level smog. Yoni’s vocal, in turn, builds in intensity with the rise of each musical passage, shedding jokes and confessions with an equal sense of dead eyed concentration. Rebuilt into its new arrangement, the song breathes with an exciting dynamism absent from its recorded counterpart.
The weaker points, however, are those which cling more to their studio counterparts; especially those which are most devoid of rhythm in the first place. Why? are clear fans of the Eskimo Snow effort ‘January Twenty Something’ – a song which puts its arm out of its socket striving for the epic, but barely even gets a fingertip to it. Yoni may be many things, but a straight up singer is not among them.
The set helps to reveal why ‘The Vowels Part 2’ is one of their strongest submissions – in its position as the most perfect blend of hip-hop influence, and melodic instinct. Yoni’s vocal line would be impossible to replicate on an acoustic around the campfire, but it’s equally distant from the realm of spoken word. Unfurling with don’t-look-back-majesty and a robust framework of tight rhyme and tighter metre, it’s the set’s unsurprising highlight, among material which frequently pushes closer to ticking the same boxes, even as this might currently fail to translate in the studio.
& yeah that photo's old and not even from a London show but Google's not throwing up a lot.