Josiah Wolf’s “Jet Lag”: Breaking Up Is Wearying

Those familiar with WHY?, especially fans of the group’s 2008 release “Alopecia,” might not believe that Josiah Wolf’s new album, “Jet Lag,” is the solo work of that band’s drummer. Whereas WHY? mixes hip-hop rhythms and rhymes with avant garde indie rock lyrical and tonal complexity to create intriguing if not always successful music, “Jet Lag” is a straightforward, low-key break-up album. The LP rambles through Wolf’s reflections on the end of his 11-year relationship. At times, Wolf eloquently captures the spiteful details of a love in demise. In “The New Car,” he recalls “But when you told me I wasted your twenties / I didn’t know what to say.” He can also craft memorable imagery, as in “That Kind of Man,” when he sings “Around the age of ten / I had a dream / I was inside of an inflatable tent / floating in a swimming pool / the girls lined up to come in.”

But the majority of “Jet Lag” is boring and autobiographical to a fault, with generic guitar and percussion-heavy instrumentation that borders on the soporific. Wolf too often can’t see anything but himself; he doesn’t have the ability of a musician like the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle to turn highly personal, painful experiences into art with a universal reach. It might be possible to overlook this problem if “Jet Lag” didn’t drag so heavily from track to track. There just isn’t enough to hold the interest of the listener — musically, lyrically or otherwise — to have him slog through the entirety of “Jet Lag” without wanting to flip off the iPod. Wolf’s grief is genuine, but it’s easier to want to feel for him than it is to actually do so.

Part of the reason for this is his limited vocal range, which certainly reinforces the monotonous nature of “Jet Lag.” And it also doesn’t help that Wolf sometimes just tries too hard be profound. The lyrics veer from the conventional, as in “That Kind of Man,” when he muses banalities like, “bad decisions leave a scar on the hearts of women and men” to the irritating, as in “The Apart Meant,” when he sings “Unused I love yous / build up in my throat / and my apartment smells like divorce.” A line like this would be barely tolerable if it only occurred once in a track, but Wolf chooses to repeat the stanza over and over as if it carried the weight of a Shakespearean sonnet. Listening to “Jet Lag” from beginning to end isn’t quite the musical equivalent of taking a red-eye from New York to Bangkok; but once finished, it’s doubtful anyone would be in a hurry to take the journey again anytime soon.