Pitchfork

Photo by Jason Bergman

If "Yoni Wolf and his band Why? are outcasts from groups of outcasts," as Pitchfork's Jason Crock wrote, then the levels of outcasts-ness only multiply on this selection from the Anticon outfit's just-released The Hollows EP. "Broken Crow" was originally a dark, sludgy hip-hop track by Why? and Odd Nosdam offshoot Reaching Quiet, who released it on 2002's In the shadow of the livingroom. The new Why? EP includes covers by such artists as Xiu Xiu, Boards of Canada, Dntel, Yo La Tengo's James McNew, and Nick Thorburn from Islands and the now-defunct Unicorns. It's Thorburn who turns in a cover of Reaching Quiet's "Broken Crow".

Whew. If you've made it this far, the rest of this post should be a bit easier to follow. Thorburn slows down the original's rapidly yelped rhymes and refits "Broken Crow" for piano, stumbling cymbal crashes, and his own whispering vocals. Here and there he might repeat a lyric for emphasis ("You know it's hard/ You know it's hard"), but elsewhere he occasionally cuts several lines at a time (for example, the types of jobs "you" find downtown). This recording is somber where the original was manic, and if it doesn't have the funniest line from the Reaching Quiet rendition-- "Last night I practiced holding my breath/ My record is two minutes and 13 seconds"-- well, maybe he knows there's nothing funny about failing to make it in the big city and having to move back home with your parents.

MP3:> Nick Thonburn: "Broken Crow"
[from the Europe version of "The Hollows" 12" ep out now on Tomlab]