Love is All - Nine TimesThat Same Song

Mon 18th Dec, 2006 in Music Reviews

Repetition and subversion are two words that sit nicely with me. Similar to jokes that get funnier the more they are told, some forms of music just get better with age and reinterpretation. Furthermore, many great acts of rhetoric have relied upon the often misunderstood act of repetition.

Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. These ramblings have a point: as someone well-versed/chorused on the subject once said, in what has come to be known as the Regurgitator axiom, “I like repetitive music”. Indeed many an act of subversion has been based on repetition (you only have to look at the likes of Gang of Four, Wire, and, nowadays, Art Brut for relevant pickings).

Nine Times That Same Song, the debut album from the Swedish indie-pop group Love is All marries the two – repetition and subversion – in a manner that can only be described as…um, well…love. To the untrained ear, Love is All may trade in noise and nothing but, yet a few listens reveal a core of simple, yet brilliantly written and catchy pop songs.

Despite the allegations of the title, Nine Times That Same Song contains ten – count ‘em ten – frenetic, lo-fi, noisy garage pop tunes. There are plenty of nods to the past, but then the band pretty much admit as much on the album opener ‘Talk Talk Talk’ which has Josephine Olausson squealing the title’s refrain in full Karen O mode over a deep-voiced choir of “one more time”. If we really must listen to another act doing retro-tinged pop “one more time” then they may as well bring something different, dare I say subversive, to the proverbial music table.

What Love is All bring is an infectious sense of joyful abandon to a sound that is often associated with hollow posturing. Plenty of comparisons have been made, often to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and in a way they are justified, but Love is All are even more off-the-hook and more fun, whilst remaining completely sincere. Nine Times… documents some of life’s particularly heartache inducing moments, often cast off in more trivial fashion by Olausson’s partly undecipherable, partly lost-in-translation, very reverb drowned verbals, and the band’s imperfect yet all too apt playing.

Rather poignantly, Love is All hone in on those less than perfect times that permeate human existence. Sprawling saxophone, guitars that veer from post-punk to early pop stylings, drums and keys provide the soundtrack for messy break-ups (Busy Doing Nothing), messy parties (the stop-start Make Out Fall Out Make Up) and messing up in general (Trying Too Hard). There are moments of elegance against the odds too: ‘Felt Tip’ is a relatively retrained call to the kids, while Turn the Radio Off and Turn the TV Off are admirable odes to the empty, repetitive and wholly entrapping comfort afforded by mass media. These are songs to smile at and, indeed, even when shaking your head at some of the life-like narratives it will be with a knowing grin rather than a scowl.

They say emotions are infectious and this is evident when, in Busy Doing Nothing, we are told of a day consisting of “Five movie marathons! Nine times that same song!”. One is tempted to add “ten times this same album!”. A truly enjoyable album and one well worthy of hitting the repeat button – repeatedly.