I was an 18-year-old heading into my freshman year of college when Why? released their seminal, irony-filled album, Alopecia. My teenage self found an immediate kinship with the dark lyrics, which sounded like they were scrawled down in suburban parking lots and high schools. Like the disease he stole the album's name from, Alopecia laid out all of frontman Yoni Wolf's most embarrassing, disgusting, strange, and unappetizing stories in unmistakable clarity.

I spent the next decade reciting the lyrics back and forth until I could match the tempo of Wolf's every stutter and self-deprecating line. But Alopecia has always been a private album for me, I had never seen Why? live, and a fondness for confessional songs about jacking off in art museums isn't something I'm in the habit of sharing widely.

That changed Monday night when I felt what was either joy or shamelessness, as a room full of people that looked like generally mopey misfits sang nearly the entire 45-minute album in unison, sometimes drowning out Wolf's own voice.

Certain songs turned into glorified Karaoke sets with people screaming their favorite lines with little regard for how strange they sounded: "sucking dick for drink tickets at the free bar at my cousin's bat mitzvah,” or “even if I haven't seen you in years yours is a funeral I would fly to from anywhere” or “I'll suck the marrow out, and rape your hollow bones Yoni."

Alopecia was never a commercial success, and other than a narrow swathe of 20-somethings with either private high school or liberal art degree educations, most people never even noticed the album's existence. Maybe the age of Obama that briefly followed Alopecia's release was looking more for sincerity than heartfelt cynicism. As I left Neumos and walked into the chilly November air, and saw people sleeping on sidewalks and walked by sports cars parked underneath bougie lofts in a neighborhood that barely had either 10 years ago, I couldn't help but think that Wolf's pessimism might be the only way to survive in this world. Or maybe irony is just more fun under a president of the opposite party.