Love is All @ Beck's Verandah,Perth (23/2/2007)

Sat 24th Feb, 2007 in Gig Reviews

Those Vikings really are invading. Last weekend it was Jenny Wilson, last night Peter Bjorn and John came to town and now we have Love is All. Evidently, Sweden is so hot right now. But yet so cold…

The problem with Love is All is that they’re swimming pretty close to ‘more than you can chew’ waters. Headlining shows a few thousand miles from home is one thing but having the material to keep your fans entertained long enough is another. But that’s something vocalist Josephine Olausson is up-front about from the off. “We’ve never played for more than 40 minutes before but we’re supposed to play for an hour,” she explains, before suggesting the band slow things down to fill the allotted timeslot.

But dropping the pace isn’t something Love is All are willing to do. They race through the first half-dozen tracks in no time at all, leaving the crowd nervous over whether the set would make it past the 30-minute mark. But spending a gig looking at your watch is never a smart move, and the energy radiating from the five bouncing bodies on stage is a perfect distraction. While debut album Nine Times the Same Song is a collection of raucous indie-pop trying to outdo each other in the most-ridiculous-BPM stakes, Love is All’s live set is a little less polished, a little clumsier and a whole lot more fun.

In its whirlwind three minutes, Talk Talk Talk Talk, the opening number from Nine Times the Same Song, outlines the Love is All sound and, as indicated by the name of the record, things don’t change much over the 11 songs that follow. There’s the constant, frenetic drumming, punctuated by the oh-so-contagious stop-start hook. There’s the staccato guitar sound of Nicholaus Sparding and there’s the relentless bass from Johan Lindwall, who, in his stripes and hat, looks as though his other job is sketching tourists’ portraits on the banks of the Seine. And then there’s saxophonist Fredrik Eriksson, who makes the most of those long breaks in between lines - bouncing around the stage like an indie-pop Bez.

But at the forefront of everything tonight is Olausson. Like a Sugarcubes-era Bjork (also a Viking) being accosted by Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O (sadly not), LIA’s lead singer’s vocals stand out not so much for their content but for their style and delivery as she destroys any sort of lyrical coherance in Ageing Has Never Been His Friend, Used Goods and Turn the Radio Off. When she takes a moment or two to address the crowd between tracks, her words are only slightly more decipherable (“shankyou show mushhh”). But despite all of that, Olausson’s showpersonship takes hold of just about everybody in the crowd and makes it hard not to enjoy the performance. As the end of the set looms, it’s the band’s frontperson that brings Busy Doing Nothing, Make Out Fall Out Make Up and a mystery cover to life, making every second of this show worth it.