Love Is All - Two Thousand And Ten Injuries

I’m a complete sucker for these guys, specifically the bi-polar projection of vocalist Josephine Olausson’s cutesy pop against the band’s art punk racket. I love how lyrically they don’t stray too far from the trials and tribulation of love in your late twenties. I love the artwork that each record presents; an old fashion cut and paste job with an X-Acto knife and retro fashion photography.

Enough already-I love these guys completely, the total package.

Love is all, indeed.

The band’s third album, Two Thousand And Ten Injuries, finds them in front of a real 24-track studio while still sounding like they’re bashing out their sweet curio in the basement of some college town rental home. They’re using the studio as a band member now, with interesting vocal treatments and infectious rhythms bouncing around the mix. The bass is a little deeper and the mix a bit wider, but there’s no doubt that it’s still the same band I grew infatuated with on the raw punk/pop of Nine Times The Same Song.

Two Thousand And Ten Injuries shows the band growing a bit with their jump to a new label, offering Love Is All a better opportunity for potential and not just with becoming a record reviewer’s unknown pleasure.

So here is your chance to play catch-up; Two Thousand And Ten Injuries is as accessible as all get out while managing to keep those cute distorted vocals and post-punk worship that recalls a time when bands added a saxophone to the mix alongside afro-beat rhythms without knowing what “afro-beat” even meant.

It’s a record that will eventually land a song or two in some commercial or movie soundtrack; so impress your friends now before some geeky music consultant secures the rights.

The star is-and has always been-Olausson who is the ultimate optimist, bouncing from one failed relationship to another without sounding like a Debbie Downer, pulling you towards the pity pot while she recites the drama of her latest break-up.
She’s a master at self-deprecation and she’s brave enough to relate her faults with such easy-going attitude that you’ll want to hit the bars with her to help find her next mistake.

But understand that this optimism is nothing without the band’s aerosol bursts of quirky rhythms, guitar stabs, and those goose honking saxophones that everyone from Madness to INXS seemed to incorporate in the early 80’s.

It’s enough to make you grab whoever is near and work on making some bad decisions together, something that Olausson knows all too well, according to Two Thousand And Ten Injuries.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.