Wolf Review

Something changes in the middle of this record. The murk of Goblin gives way to actual chords, and the palette that defines everything after it starts to show: soft electric piano, wandering bass, string pads, a fondness for the major seventh that he never abandons. IFHY is the pivot, a love song that turns into a panic attack and back again, with Pharrell singing the calm half.

Answer is the plainest thing he has written about his father to that point and it does not reach for a punchline at the end. Treehome95 is three minutes of Erykah Badu, a Rhodes and no rapping at all, and it is the strongest argument on the album. Slater and Cowboy show the arrangements getting patient. What holds it back is length and old habit.

Seventy one minutes and eighteen tracks is a great deal of concept for a story set at a summer camp, the Sam and Wolf conceit is thinner than the songs built around it, and Trashwang exists mainly to remind you the crew is still in the building. Critics at the time filed it as promising rather than finished, which was fair. Heard now it is the hinge in the discography. Everyone who loves what comes next is really hearing ideas that start here.