Light You Up – “All We’ve Ever Known” [Album Review]

The UK pop punk scene is making a bit of a noise for itself these days with bands like Neck Deep making serious waves outside our own country. Having seen the success of the aforementioned Neck Deep, Light You Up from Birmingham are taking a stab at it with their own slice of infectious pop-punk rock courtesy of their debut album All We’ve Ever Known.

Now you’d be forgiven for seeing the words “pop-punk” and thinking, “meh, whatever…” at the start of this review, but I defy you not to be nodding along to the title track as soon as it kicks in sounding, for want of a better description, like New Found Glory’s rougher younger brother. The rest of the album is fairly generic pop-punk fodder, but there is something about when British bands do it that makes it, well, sound okay. Maybe it’s the gravelly vocals or the fact that when they write songs about life and love, it doesn’t end up sounding like something written by a stroppy teenager. Songs like “Always Wanting More” and “Monsters” are belting little foot-stompers and that is something else that Light You Up do really well but, at the same time, so do a million other bands.

So we’ve got the bouncy songs, we’ve got the anthems, and we’ve also got the emotional ones in “Brother” and “We Were Young,” but nothing we’ve not heard before. Admittedly, it’s done well so, when frontman Tom Napier rasps “We’ve got so much more to give…” on album closer “We Were Young,” you get the impression that he’s probably not wrong thus putting Light You Up firmly in the pile marked ones to keep a beady eye on.

Track Listing:

01. Breathe
02. It’s About Time
03. All We’ve Ever Known
04. Good Days
05. Always Wanting More
06. Haven’t You Heard
07. Monsters
08. Foxfire
09. You Waiting For A Train
10. Brother
11. We Were Young

Run Time: 39:34
Release Date: January 26, 2015

Check out the song “It’s About Time” here.