Why Bother? A City of Unsolved Miseries LP
In these post-everything times where there seems to be less and less room for truly idiosyncratic expressions, it is very pleasing to realize that there are still people playing with the space-time equation of underground music history, not to simply recreate greatness lost under the weight of memory, but to found new lineages of sound. Iowa’s WHY BOTHER? is just such a band, with a lo-fi sound that takes certain melodic ideas from late ’80s indie music (HÜSKER DÜ) and classic Midwestern punk, mixed with melancholic poppy hooks and, in this case, lyrics about unsolved murder. The result is shattering, an album full of instant left-of-the-dial anthems, with layers of synth that create eerie atmospheres for what is essentially a kind of mutant garage rock album. I read somewhere that WHY BOTHER? doesn’t play live, but I hope they keep producing music of this quality forever.