Lit - A Place In The Sun


Please tell me pi. I think it's 3.1415926535.... i always thought that would be the perfect Bill Nye The Science Guy music video spoof, but i neither wrote for that show nor paid their licensing fees, so that sadly never happened. 

Fun fact, Lit's 2nd album, A Place In The Sun, was released the day before my 19th birthday. Also fun fact, i know exactly why i was sleeping with my clothes on every single time. I was too tired to care. Bowling alleys. I dunno. This is the first one of these albums i haven't actually listened to all the way through because we all knew they would be a one hit wonder. Will it be the first not good album of the week (Oleander was still a good album even if i didn't like it that much)? Allmusic said they were definitely not better than Better Than Ezra, as well as much less than Less than Jake. So, thank you for that clairvoyant Bottle-style grammatical humor opportunity, but let's find out for ourselves. 

Judging by the cover, the place they are referring to is an ironically lonely 1960s pool party. Oh deity of pestilence (i'm sure there is one, but i'm not gonna look it up) this album "inspired" Eve 6, Good Charlotte, and The All-American Rejects. Now i'm really not looking forward to it. Those bands had 2 good songs each, period, no negotiation. Please surprise me. 

That slow burn intro to Four is pretty good. "She wakes up lonely...," did i call that sarcastic cover photo, or what? Great song though, if the tiniest bit under tempo. It is, it's like 6 BPM slower than it wants to be. Totally redeemed by the uptick for My Own Worst Enemy though. However, it's a bit "two different bands" for my liking. If that keeps up we're in trouble, but for now the first 8 minutes are totally fine. 

Yup, Down is the logical track 2 to Four. I can't recall Miserable, but i remember it was another single. Oh yeah, cum/plete/lymiserable. That song is total Blue Album Weezer, no idea why no one made that comparison at the time. No beating around the bush here, there're the songs the label wanted as actual radio singles and then there're the songs the band just normally wrote as a band. Those two things aren't the same band. 

No way! There's a bit of a gap, but i'm absolutely certain the end of Down was intended to properly segue into No Big Thing. This was supposed to be a slow build album. Now i feel bad for these guys, it's not their fault at all. This is exactly what happened on Carpenters Offering, fucking producers. Now i remember Zip-Lock. 

Let's go back to that inspired by thing. I don't hear what Eve 6 and AARP got out of it, but Good Charlotte just straight up copied everything about it. Ignore chronological time and this sounds exactly like a "mature" Good Charlotte album. Lifestyles... of the bands that we copied...." 

Official verdict, this is a completely lovely sophomore album with 4 non-album singles interpolated into it for no discernable reason. Hold up, they put out a new album 11 days ago? Let's skim the rest. Happy has a horn section. Best and Place end this perfectly fine Pop Punk album. Now we find that new album. 

Oh god it's fucking horrible. Don't go search out Tastes Like Gold. It sounds like Damon Albarn and Aaron Bruno were banned from aborting their ill-advised collaboration and couldn't afford the gas money to drive as far away from each other as possible or take it out to the desert and bury it. Tastes Like Gold? No, that's not at all what it tastes like. Stick to A Place In The Sun, that one's at least not their fault (see why i had to mention AB for that joke?). Maybe one day i'll be insane enough to check out the intervening 4 albums, but hell to the no right now. I don't think you could get me lit enough in 3 lifetimes. 

The official verdict is this could have been a good album if RCA hadn't been bound and determined to extract every single ha'penny they possibly could from the only 3 radio-friendly songs they could squeeze out of the band. That's not a criticism, the other songs on this album are lovely, but even Bottle will admit they aren't drive-time. I'm Bottle, in case you forgot. 

It's 'cause i pre-wrote this Thursday night and scheduled it to publish around lunch-time, isn't it? I had to for my sanity, Friday's are the worst.

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