Poor Lily

Vuxola (2013)

AndyPonch

Poor Lily make a lot of noise for a three-piece and that's a good thing. The Bronx NY trio have another solid release on their hands and they're 3 for 3 with their second full-length Vuxola. Poor Lily have been compared to Fugazi and while it didn't make sense at first, it does now. The influence won't be heard immediately as it's below the surface in song structure and arrangement. The arrangements Poor Lily is able to pull off are pretty impressive considering there are only three people in the band, there's a lot going on and while it's sometimes chaotic, everything is tied together making sense out of the madness. There's also elements here that remind me of SNFU, NoMeansNo, Dead Kennedys, Minutemen and Gone which is interesting as all three of the musicians making up Poor Lily have roots deep in NYHC. While they haven't distanced themselves from their roots, they're not using it as a battle cry, which can sometimes happen and instead their influences are literally all over the musical map.

Lyrically Poor Lily draw their greatest comparisons to Fugazi and the Minutemen on some of the songs such as "Hawking Jesus" or "Hack Magic" are short on lyrics but big on intensity as the band gets their point across without having to fill the song with additional narrative showcasing their fantastic musicianship. This type of song arrangement can work if band has the proper chemistry and they do in this case. Poor Lily take the 3-chord punk stereotype and make a mockery of it without showboating and filling songs with unnecessary solos, they've created a balance that is surprisingly not more popular. They threw verse, chorus, verse out the window as well. Who could pull off a song about being a railroad spike? Poor Lily and the track "Railroad Spike" proves just that, they can tackle even the most seemingly uninspired topic and run with it. Other stand-outs include "The Days Are Not Piano Keys", "Send in the Drones" and the aforementioned "Hawking Jesus".