Love is All Issue #38

A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night (What's Your Rupture?)

By Erik Adams
Published: December 1st, 2008 | 11:24am

Few songwriters are as upfront with their phobias and nasty private thoughts as Love Is All’s Josephine Olausson, who used the band’s debut album — 2006’s Nine Times That Same Song — to sing and shout with devilish glee about avoiding social calls while her bandmates wailed away at a disco-punk version of Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound.

Love Is All approaches its follow up to Nine Times with a “not broke, not fixing it” attitude — expanding upon pre-established themes and sounds. Despite the apparent emotional core of “Movie Romance” and “A More Uncertain Future” (the latter of which is the most affecting indie pop break-up duet since the Postal Service’s “Never Better”), Olausson remains repelled by most people, learning that she may never have a comfortable escape: A vacation at sea puts her in constant contact with flabby, pervy people walking around on plastic hips (“Sea Sick”); and the infinite possibilities of outer space yield a number of terrors (“Big Bangs, Black Holes, Meteorites”). Parsing out these lyrics, like the litany of excuses on “19 Floors,” reveals Olausson’s wicked sense of humor: “I can’t make small talk, so I’d rather walk / Than take the elevator.”

The band wraps Olausson in claustrophobic caterwauls played at nerve-fraying tempos. Unfortunately, on the record’s two slow songs, Love Is All breaks the most important commandment of Spector homage: Thou shalt not overuse the “kick kick-kick snare” intro from the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” Elsewhere, A Hundred Things showcases a more economic band, one that knows just how far to push things.

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