ALBUM REVIEW: Lit – The View From The Bottom

Having been a fan of Lit in the past, being wee teenagers bopping along to My Own Worst Enemy off the acclaimed A Place in the Sun album, (released in 1999) we were excited to hear that they were writing again and couldn’t wait to get our ears on it! Oh and what a treat for the ears it is!

After a few years of tragedy including the untimely and very sad passing of their former drummer Allen Shellenberger, it would have been understandable to think that lifelong friends and bandmates A. Jay and Jeremy Popoff and Kevin Baldes would not return to music, or at least not carry Lit on. It undoubtedly must have crossed their minds. With new members Nathan Walker (old friend and drum tech to Shellenberger) and Ryan Gillmor, Lit return with an invigorated sound. We imagine that carrying on gave the band a great deal of closure, both serving as a fitting tribute to Shellenberger by continuing the success that he helped create and also as a way to process their grief. Lit return with The View From The Bottom which, although does have elements of their A Place in the Sun period that will reignite previous fans, but also holds a sense of maturity, displaying a kind of narrative which is in part down to the tragedy they all experienced. “Part of us wanted to touch on the stuff that we’d been through and there was another part of us that just wanted to get back to the idea of having fun and being excited to play live,” Jeremy Popoff.

One of our favourite tracks on the album is the opening song C’mon – I guarantee you will be singing along in a matter of minutes. Not only is it a stonking brilliant song as an album opener it sets the scene for the narrative of the rest of the album. C’mon was co-written with Marti Frederiksen (previous collaborations include Aerosmith and Ozzy Osbourne) helping to construct a big ‘rock opener’.

The album took around 3 years to complete and in that time as well as working with Marti, they also worked with the likes of Butch Walker (Panic! At The Disco, Avril Lavigne) and Joe Zook (Katy Perry, The Hives) to create something that they were happy with and ended up writing many more songs than they needed.

A few more notable songs would have to be You Tonight and Right This Time, which is a very fitting conclusion to the album. Although still a fun album it is a very well thought out one, which displays the care and work which has been put into it in creating something which is obviously very important to them.