Poor Old Lu

Item: A Picture of the Eighth Wonder
Author: Bob Melvin

A Picture of the Eighth Wonder

(1996)

Reviewed by Bob Melvin

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label Alarma RecordsThe LighthouseDecember 1996

alternative rock grunge indie rock post-punk

It's a shame that this review has to serve as a postmortem. It's a shame because just months before Poor Old Lu announced that they were disbanding, they released the best and most mature album of their brief career. It's a shame because the band was just beginning to hit their stride with their incredibly melodic brand of thoughtful, truly modern rock-setting a pace that few of today's one-off Buzz Bin bands could keep up with.

For a band that has released three full-length albums and a six-song EP since 1993 and has no members that have even reached the age of 25, Poor Old Lu has made remarkable progress. Perhaps growing up in the spotlight-even in the marginalized and unfairly unreal Christian music industry world-has caused them to mature a little faster. Three of the band's four members are married, and guitarist Aaron Sprinkle has a young son. Whatever the reason for it, that maturity has manifested itself in the music of A Picture Of The Eighth Wonder.

The album, which the band produced and Sprinkle engineered, begins with a risky venture: a seven-minute-plus song with an intro more than two minutes long. "Rail" shows off Sprinkle's vastly improved guitar work, which helps to create a musical bed for singer Scott Hunter's delicately veiled frustration. The song teeters on the brink of all-out rage:

What do I do When it seems I relate to Judas more than You And I can't ever I can't ever See the end

but Hunter's breathy, lilting vocal reins the music back in. The album then takes a sharp turn into the high-octane "Receive" and the sure-fire pop hit "A Better Me." More of the substance-not-style approach is evident in the organ-drenched "What If Uncle Ben Had Lived?" and "Chance For The Chancers," an ultimately uplifting song about the cycle of heartbreak and healing.

Overall, the project is more polished and fuller sounding than any previous Poor Old Lu release, due in large part to the band's production skill and also the canny intangible of creating a mood for the music to take root and breathe. This makes up for the fact that the band hasn't strayed too far thematically from the well-covered twenty-something spiritual angst thing, except for the glorious "Hello Sunny Weather" which offers:

Break this heart as cold as stone You got to, got to now Then hello sunny weather Hello sunny weather And breathe so deep This love of Christ I got to, got to now Then hello sunny weather

All reviewing aside, though, we're losing a great band. On behalf of fans everywhere, God bless. We wish you well.