Ill Lit
I Need You
Badman Recording Co
2004
Rating: 6.5 fifteen watt bulbs out of 10
Ill Lit may be creating their very own genre right before our collective eyes – blending ambient, soundscape-style electronica with country for a new hybrid I’d like to call electro-country. No, how about countronica? OK, I’m still working out the name part, get off my back already. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
This release follows the same basic formula as Ill Lit’s debut release on Badman, but right off the bat I can say that I like this quite a bit more. Not that their debut was a bad record, but I felt that there were only a couple of strong tracks and a lot of mediocre ones. Moreover, the sound and pacing on that album stayed the same for the whole album, making it hard to sit through in one listen. “I Need You” is not plagued with these problems nearly as often – there might be one or two missteps, but it is much more listenable. They do a good job of mixing their mellow, ambient led numbers between more upbeat tracks so they don’t all pile up together on the same spot in the record. The thing with these mellower songs is that their affect is the greatest when paired next to more upbeat tracks, but too many all together has a tendency to make your attention wander elsewhere, at least for me.
The bottom line – this is a good sophomore effort by this up-and-coming LA group, and who knows? They could be starting a whole new genre or movement with their “Electrontry” music. No wait, how about twang beat? No that’s just stupid.
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