Maybe I lied last night about there being no good reason for you to not go to the show at the Vera Project. There was Daniel Johnston, Dirty Projectors, and a new episode of the Office. The last item on this list is what caused me to miss the first part of Mount Eerie ^[4]’s set (because I am a horrible person that loves television, I know.).

When I arrived, I was pleased to see the room full of more people than I’d ever encountered at the Vera Project and more people standing than I’d ever encountered at a Mount Eerie show. Phil was playing newish acoustic songs with guest vocals provided by Julie Doiron ^[5] (whom he called his favorite singer, especially his favorite singer of his songs). The ensemble occasionally consulted an oversized chart to determine the next song selection. Along the way, moving images of nature, factory floors, foggy forests, icy mountaintops, and other tranquil scenes played on an makeshift movie screen. As usual, the songs hover in the delicate space between deceptive simplicity and existential treatises, all the while sounding beautiful. There are songs called “Who” and “What” (…and WHY? is up next –rim shot!–) and a discussion of how no one pronounces the question mark in Why?’s name. They close their set with a Bjork cover, and then Phil plays one last song by himself. It is about wind in branches and reflections of the sky in puddles of rainwater; while he sings, a tree filmed on a windy day in Sacramento sways in the background.

When Why? ^[2] look like they’re about to start playing, a hush falls over the crowd and it stays that way for most of the night. The primary form of engagement with the band is meaningful head nodding in time with each song’s hypnotic underlying cadence. Yoni Wolf is a master of verbal Tetris, fitting a staggering array of words in exactly the right spaces. There is a xylophone and a piano, a guitar and plenty of percussion. The music occupies a no man’s land in the demilitarized zone between indie hip hop and melodic pop. The lyrics often come straight from the id, tiptoeing into NS for W (depending on your definition of S and where you W) territory. They could be the perceptive scribblings of an especially articulate and hormonally-charged teenager — maybe a more creative version of the kid in the new Gus van Sant movie — and often cut straight to the heart. By the time the band plays their pretend last song (which earns them a “friend for life” when they close with “Gemini”), the crowd has been loosened up enough to ask for an encore. The indulge, hosting a preliiminary Q & A session and wrapping things up with one more.

I went in not knowing much about Why?, but definitely left very impressed. I predict that Alopeica will be in heavy-rotation for a while.