15 Albums That Mean Something to Me: 'Alopecia', Why?

Basically, you just can't ignore an album the first lyric of which is

I'm not a ladies' man I'm a landmine 
Filming my own fake death. 

Can't ignore, can't argue. I STILL get goosebumps every time I listen to it. It is one of the ones whose lyrics I have shamelessly plagiarised in my own writing. This is probably one of the few albums that makes it on here according to musical merit more than the memories I directly associate with it - mainly because, unusually amongst these records - it was recommended to me by someone that I didn't know very well, and chased it up simply because I was looking for new music (well, mainly. Also he had trendy glasses and LOOKED LIKE A YOUNG STEVE ALBINI.) We still don't know each other terribly well, so it wasn't one of those albums that became friendship/relationship defining (let's not beat about the bush, I pretty much only ever check out music because someone I crush on recommends them to me.)* However, this is a bit of a double edged sword, because I do feel a sense of ownership over Why? that I have with very few other bands. You know how, if you get introduced to a musician by a friend or a lover, there's often this slight sense that you're an imposter - not *truly* a fan, just someone who likes this band because someone older/wiser/better-informed/looking/in some other way unattainable - knows a lot more about them than you do. You know that feeling, right? Of course you do, because you're reading about music on the internet, and the ONLY reason anyone ever does that is because they're looking for that elusive sense of belonging. I'm right, yeah? That sense that you know enough about a band to not be embarrassed when someone calls you on your knowledge. Otherwise, why would you give a fuck what the name of the bassist is, would you? You don't. I know you don't. You know I know you don't. You and I both just don't want to look stupid.

But yeah. With Why? it really wasn't like that. The boy I was trying (VAGUELY) to impress didn't live in my city, so basically I was just allowed to get on with it. They were kind of my secret, you know? Which meant that I didn't have to know the names of all the band members or the chronology of their different releases: I could just listen. Really listen. And I lapped this album up in a way that happens very rarely to me. And it's so meaty - lyrically, it's just unbelievably dense, and even the resonances in Yoni Wolf's intonation repay seriously close attention. One of the lyrics from the album runs:

'I'll suck the marrow out - and rape your hollow bones Yoni'

Right, so *I'M NOT WEIRD* - but this feels to me like an apt metaphor for what you do with this album. It's undeniably lyrically oblique - abstruse, even - but it's insistent and when you listen to it, you force meanings onto it. Meanings, perhaps, that doesn't quite fit the individual lyric or the delivery but makes perfect sense to you at the time - and for me, that means that this listening from one end of this album to another is stuffed full of memories that have literally nothing to do with the album itself. For posterity, I will now record the most prominent example:

'You're a beautiful and violent word
With the skinny neck of a chinese bird'
('These Few Presidents', Alopecia)

This never fails to remind me of Sam, who's always struck me as birdlike. This was particularly the case when we were first going out because he had a fuzzy shaved head which really put me in mind of unfledged down. I remember going to stay at his house after Christmas, when we hadn't seen each other for a while, and I'd been listening to Why? a lot in the interim, and we were in bed together and it felt so nest-like that the image stayed with me, and it's now become an integral part of the way that I think about him.

Jesus. It is too much to talk about all the different things this album means to me. Take it as read that EVERY song on this album has three or four moments in it that have memories that strong - that fucking physical - attached to them. And that, my exciting TWO READERS, is why it is in my top 15 albums ever.

PS: After I am done with my Top 15 albums, I may do a Top 15 Why? lyrics, and go into more detail about the images they evoke for me. PROJECT JAZZ HANDS! 

And here endeth the lesson.

 *For the purposes of pointless autobiographising, I have for years been vaguely meaning to organise my record collection according to which boys I was trying to impress with each purchase. This has never happened due to SHAME, but perhaps now is the time.