by Amy Rowe
If there’s one thing that’s been a constant in Yoni “WHY?” Wolf’s decades of making music, it’s his yearning. Wolf is always longing for something that’s out of reach, and he continues that on his latest release, Oh Golly / Yes Lord. Aside from that, the ninth WHY? album heads in a significantly more electronic direction, with Wolf presenting a sound that’s as different as ever. The album has two names and is split in half – you’ll find the Cincinnati native pouring out his familiar brand of neurotic negativity to start, but arriving at gratitude for his life by the end.
The synth-heavy music on Oh Golly / Yes Lord mostly strays from Wolf’s signature surging piano melodies. While his sound may have a different flavor, owed to co-production by André 3000 and The Weeknd collaborator Nate Merceau, the lyrics continue to focus on themes like neuroticism and questioning reality. The artist is older, still single and living alone, and listeners can feel the despair in the first half. A handful of the tracks have glitchy moments mixed with autotune and percussive rap beats. Almost off the bat on album opener “Sin Lite,” Wolf goes full André 3000 with his voice, so distorted with autotune it’s nearly unrecognizable and indecipherable.
“Pretend So Real” verges on a Postal Service moment between the piano and frenetic drums. While traditional keys show up on the album, like they do in support of the distorted falsetto chorus of “Hare,” the song is otherwise injected with a swirling aura of the ethereal cooked up on a computer. Wolf’s lyricism remains golden after all these years, and his rap-battle-worthy rhymes shine throughout, including moments of sweetness on “Chaos Theory” where he rhymes, “But what I see potentially for you and me, it’s worth more than a fling / more than a ring from a gumball machine in a long lost corner of the Dollar Tree.”
On the second half of “Parks Tour,” Wolf tells a story set in Los Angeles, and singer/rapper Kitty Ray answers his lines with valley girl cadence (prior to her standout rap verse on the following song, “Story of My Life”):
“I thought I’d go to LA and get invited”
“Right”
“Apparently the feeling was unrequited”
“Tight”
“Ended up alone at the Griffith on my phone writing little dark poems in the brightness”
“Okay…”
Our increasingly online world and the many things that result from it, loneliness being one, is a big theme throughout Oh Golly/Yes Lord. On “Sin Lite,” Wolf sings, “I don’t need no ring light, I stay lit with insight,” and the somber “Not Really Stranger” starts with him complaining, “the algorithm is against me. I’m lost in your feed, I’ve got a need, we’re destined to meet.” Feeling isolated and longing for love can lead to depressive spells, but at least Wolf channels this into his music, a healthy and rewarding outlet. It’s been there for him throughout his life, especially in hard times, like his struggles with Crohn’s disease and mental health. Through it all, and on this new record, the 47-year-old is refusing to be stuck in the old world. He demonstrates his readiness to evolve or at least play ball with the sensibilities of Gen Z through the music and lyrics, and he succeeds in keeping it fresh and interesting.