Lit a place in the sun full album download

Anyone who’s still in denial that live music is stagnating needs to look no further than this summer’s most boring trend: bands who haven’t made a good album in 20 years playing their “classic album in full”. In June at Download, Linkin Park performed Hybrid Theory and the Offspring, their third album Smash. Nas did Illmatic at Lovebox in July and Jane’s Addiction did Nothing’s Shocking for their UK tour last month. This week, there’s even an entire festival in Chicago and Denver dedicated to artists too lazy to write a proper setlist. Weezer, Slayer, Jane’s Addiction and seven more will plough through their biggest albums front-to-back at Riot Fest, so if you want to hear a band you used to like perform a track they wrote as filler 20 years ago, knock yourself out.

Be honest: when was the last time you actually played an album, including all those rubbish “skits” artists are so keen on, all the way through? People’s attention spans are now the length of a Vine; there are probably 18-year-olds who’ve never even downloaded a full album. Carefully curated setlists were invented for this very reason, especially at festivals, where you’ve got to keep people hyped or they’ll wander off to buy an £8.50 ostrich burger. The big draw is unlikely to be the last song on an album. You want the emotional peaks and troughs of a tried-and-tested performance, not something predictable. No one wants to be at a James Morrison gig where the woman next to you says, “Well, the next song has to be track seven because he’s just played track six.” Actually, you probably don’t want to be at a James Morrison gig, ever.

Last year, the Darkness toured the UK doing Permission To Land – which worked because it’s mostly all bangers – but in May this year, Lit did A Place In The Sun at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, and that was … not great. Their biggest tune, My Own Worst Enemy – the one you’ll remember from every 90s teen film and the one that should close the set – is the second song. The only good thing was that you could check iTunes and time your bathroom trip to exactly the length of track eight (4m 9s, FYI).

Yet, the “album in full” format just won’t die. Instead, it’s hanging around pointlessly like Pixie Lott, invading every festival and gig you go to. Soon, every band who ever existed will be “celebrating” the 10th/15th/20th anniversary of every album they’ve ever released by playing it in full, even at festivals, meaning all festivals are 10 days long to fit in each 90-minute set. Everyone’s exhausted, everyone runs out of annual leave, festival tickets will cost £800 … Until a band “goes retro”, that is, and writes a setlist containing all their biggest hits. See you back on the live music scene in 2019, then. Which, incidentally, will be the 10th anniversary of Pixie Lott’s seminal album, Turn It Up.