Finally! It’s coming! The album is coming! No more of these desperate sounding posts, where I frantically try to scrub up every last skerrick of Love is All related soundbites. The album is coming! Sure it’s a few months late, but when it sounds this good, who really gives a shit? The new album is called ‘A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night’ and it’s a rallying call for the immense forces of Swedish pop. Shall we stand forever in over-produced, ephemeral splendour? Nay! We shall stride boldly into the world of fuzz and funk and emerge stronger and enervated!
A little over-written that intro may be, but from the moment album opener ‘New Beginning’ storms through your speakers, it is clear that Love is All is back to reclaim their place at the top of the Swedish pop rock hierarchy. And as much as I do enjoy pretty much everything that emerges from that Scandinavian wonderland these days, there’s just something so intrinsically joyful about the messiness and the hyperactivity of Love is All’s sound that you can’t help but become a little wrapped up in it all.
Pleasantly, they seem to have resisted the turn towards excessively clean production which has marked a few widely anticipated sophomore albums this year – the horns still cut borderline atonally across tracks, the drums are heavy but hollow, the guitars are tinny and Josephine belts out a chorus like no-one else. It sounds like shit on paper, but somehow it all holds together and the result is a frenetic collection of three minute long aural explosions. Nicholaus’ voice has a more central role than it did on ‘Nine Times…’ and it allows for some gorgeous boy-girl call-response/harmony moments. Indeed, for a band that tends to spend most of its time kicking along at 160 odd BPM, they manage to wrangle an awful lot of emotion and melody from their songs.
I think the thing is, at the base of it, Love is All are just a very lovable band. They always seem to be having fun, so it almost seems prudish for you not to do the same. And you will… You better… The album drops on November 11 through What’s Your Rupture, and can be pre-ordered on CD and vinyl through Insound. Get excited!
-luke
One Comment
You’ve hit the felt tip on the head with this one! The gig they played at Becks Verandah last year remains one of my all time favourites.
What a great album title, too – hopefully more than enough melodies to soundtrack those insomniac maladies.