The Best Worst-Case Scenario

Album Review

Christian indie rockers Fair are the new project by singer/songwriter Aaron Sprinkle, whose previous band, Poor Old Lu, and ongoing solo career are much beloved by folks on the somewhat edgier side of the CCM marketplace. Fundamentally, The Best Worst-Case Scenario is of a piece with Sprinkle's earlier work; the Seattle native has a distinctive vocal style — a winsome, boyish tenor with just a hint of twang — that's his most appealing attribute, and also one that would be difficult to downplay. But The Best Worst-Case Scenario lacks the emo-tinged heaviness and distortion of much of Sprinkle's earlier work. This album is filled with moody guitar pop songs not at all dissimilar to fellow artists of the Pacific Northwest like the Shins and the Decemberists, but with a more slickly commercial edge, as if Sprinkle was approaching this album with an ear toward the alterna-rock radio mainstream. This would also explain the considerably more oblique lyrical style on this album; songs like "The Attic" and "The Dumbfound Game" couch Sprinkle's spiritual side in lyrics so allegorical that listeners who don't know of his beliefs may well not be any wiser after they've heard them. More doctrinaire fans of Poor Old Lu or Aaron Sprinkle's solo albums might be somewhat put off as a result of these shifts toward the musical and lyrical mainstream, but the resulting album is melodically satisfying enough to make lyrical disagreements somewhat beside the point.