REVIEW: Lit, A Place in the Sun (RCA) /
Citizen King, Mobile Estates (Warner Bros.)
- Scott Slonaker
Every so often, radio gets its infusion of new blood. And naturally, a good deal of the new kids in town distinctly recall their airwave-hogging predecessors. Orange County's Lit do just that with their brand of power-pop. A Place in the Sun, the four-piece band's major-label debut, is a lot like Weezer reinterpreted by the high school football team, or Everclear as a party band who sings about girls instead of drugs -- in other words, a lot more slickly clean, straightforward '90s rock-radio guitars and rah-rah rhythms, and a lot less of the muffle 'n squeak of the ex-alternative nation.
Lit's hit single "My Own Worst Enemy" spins a leftover AC/DC riff into a stoopid-happy pogothon about getting drunk and screwing people and things up. Voila! An anthem. The best of the rest of the album include the semi-power ballad "Miserable" ("You make me come/ You make me complete/ You make me completely miserable") and the punky bounce of "No Big Thing," which, more than anything, shows off the band's skate-punk roots.
Milwaukee's Citizen King fits squarely with its predecessors as well: the Sugar Ray "he's-the-DJ-I'm-the-rocker" hybrid, Beck's cut-and-paste pop (the opening track, "Under the Influence," is quite aptly named). The quintet's debut album, Mobile Estates, is carefully calculated to sound off-the-cuff, like some sort of block-party mix tape. The hit single, "Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out)," is somewhat of a "Ramblin' Man" for hip-hop reared suburbanites -- streaked with a good shot of Sublime and catchy as heck.
Most of the rest of Mobile Estates is solid late-nineties beatbox alterna-pop, when it's not stealing too many rhythms ("Safety Pin" seems taken wholesale from "The New Pollution"). Actually, the band shows themselves to be quite the vinyl aficionados, as evidenced by the long list of obscure samples in the album credits. The old-school hip-hop sound of "Basement Show" is enough of a winner on its own, but the boys work in a Fear sample and make it rock. Another standout is the singalong, twangy chorus of "Long Walk Home."
Both A Place in the Sun and Mobile Estates are brimming with savory pop songs and maintain a good level of consistency from beginning to end. But, will that be enough to make a career? Neither act are former drug addicts who sing about their scars. Neither act has frontmen who are teen dreams or dead. Can solid craftsmanship and production stand in for personality and interview "hooks?" We'll know in a couple of years, won't we?
