Why?

Two points I'd like to make in response to this uninformative and uninspired review:

1. I am puzzled as to how the line "Even though I haven't seen you in years/yours is a funeral I'd fly to from anywhere" comes off as a joke, let alone a "clumsy, revolting" one. Listening with even a modicum of sensitivity reveals this line to be a tender and unembellishedly honest expression of the sort of delicately small, yet steadfast dedication a person can express for someone who is lost in their past. This line is, perhaps, the most touching in the entire album.

2. The closing comments of the review, comparing Why? with Sage Francis in regards to a shared lack of honest and sincere expressions of emotion is perhaps the most troubling. Comparing these two artists with the reviewer's glowing reference to Beck's Mellow Gold (which, it could be argued, makes not one attempt at any expression of emotion, sincere or synthetic) I cannot fathom what is meant. Wolf has consistently imbued his lyricism with plaintively honest expressions of emotion (i.e. Yo Yo Bye Bye, Early Whitney, Gemini to name a few). Perhaps the reviewer would prefer the bald, insipid crooning of manufactured Top 40 crooners or the poignant ramblings of their sensitive, dorm-folk counterparts. Wolf's liberated usage of the english language is as abstract as it is effective and, in my opinion, does not suffer from a comparison to Sage Francis' vitriolic and challenging verse. Zeitgeist in spades.

This is not a bad review of a review, actually, and I'm starting to like the album more the more I listen to it. But "Even though I haven't seen you in years/yours is a funeral I'd fly to from anywhere" is a terrible line, any way you look at it.