fair review

Fair
"The Best Worst-Case Scenario"
(Tooth and Nail)

Aaron Sprinkle is the man who was behind the boards for some pretty great albums -- MxPx's "Pokinatcha," Eisley's "Room Noises," Dolour's "Suburbiac," and Waxwing's "Nobody Can Take What Everybody Owns," to name a few -- as well as playing in some pretty successful bands himself, namely Poor Old Lu and Rose Blossom Punch. Well, Sprinkle is back at it again with his new band, Fair.

Like his past bands, Sprinkle's Fair relies heavily on catchy choruses and simple song structure to get their listener's attention. "The Dumbfounded Game" sounds like something that would've appeared on a later Rose Blossom recording, not that that's a bad thing. Fair's debut is slightly more subdued, so it doesn't really ring of what Tooth and Nail has been releasing recently.

The main downfall of this record, despite how beautiful it sounds, is how similar most of the songs are. They are all pretty much midtempo and follow the intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus format, which gets dull about midway through. Luckily, the strongest tracks("Confidently Dreaming," "Unglued," "Bide My Crime") are able to highlight how good these songs can get.

There's a lot of potential with Fair; hopefully, they'll get their chance to rock out before some sort of premature break up like Sprinkle's other projects and the bands he's produced.