“So Contagious” by Aaron Sprinkle, Monday, February 19, 2024
Aaron Sprinkle began his musical career as the guitarist for Alternative Christian Rock band Poor Old Lu. The band released albums between 1990 and 2002, starting as BellBangVilla before changing their name in 1991. As the Chronicles of Narnia-inspired band was winding down, releasing In Their Final Performance in 1998, Sprinkle started the band Rose Blossom Punch, releasing two albums before disbanding. Next, Sprinkle began releasing solo records, starting with Moontraveler in 1999. He released albums consistently until 2004’s Lackluster. In 2006, Sprinkle released The Best Worst-Case Scenario by a new band called Fair.
COULD THIS BE OUT OF LINE? Fair only released two albums, concluding with 2010’s Disappearing World. In 2013, Aaron Sprinkle released Water & Guns, his first solo album in nine years. Readers of my blog will know that what Sprinkle lacked in building a concert and solo record franchise he was more than prolific in his songwriting and producing for other artists. Beginning with 1994’s debut MxPx record, Pokinacha, Sprinkle has produced some of the biggest Tooth & Nail Records albums in the early ‘00s to early ‘10s. While his production credits range from Kutless to Demon Hunter, there are several albums Sprinkle says he gets asked about most. The first was Pedro the Lion’s 2002 album Control, on which Sprinkle has writing and recording credits. The second is Anberlin’s Cities, which we’ll talk about tomorrow. The third is the cult favorite 2005 album Phantoms by Acceptance. While Anberlin and other bands have said that Sprinkle is “like a sixth member,” Sprinkle performed with Acceptance when they played When We Were Young in Las Vegas in 2022.
YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE I WOULD TAKE A SHOT FROM. “So Contagious” was the second track on Acceptance’s Phantoms. It’s the most popular song on Spotify, thanks to an inclusion on Demi Lovato’s Emo Nite Takeover playlist. Aaron Sprinkle covered the song and included it as a bonus track at the end of Water & Guns. The song was also covered by the band A Loss for Words, which was a band that convinced Acceptance’s lead singer Jason Vena to reunite with the band. Phantoms is a bit of a strange album in that it starts off slow before becoming an alternative rock album. The first two songs sound like the band is going to be another version of The Fray or OneRepublic, but on deeper listens, even these two songs, “Take Cover” and “So Contagious” reveal musical striations among the complexity of picking apart and enjoy one hook at a time. The second song is about an incandescent love that is impossible to resist. There is a little bit of Christianese embedded in the bridge: “On account of my transgression / Will you welcome this confession?” The musical variety Sprinkle uses to mix up the simple pop song keeps it a contagious song like Clostridium difficile.
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