A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night

Olausson’s quirky observations are only as good as the band backing her. And as it herks and jerks, skanks, and generally rocks the fuck out across A Hundred Things, it constantly reminds that Love Is All is one of the tightest pop outfits on the planet. [Year End 2008]

It may not deliver the same jolt as its predecessor, but its somewhat cleaner production highlights Love Is All's strengthened pop prowess.

Taken together, they position Love Is All as one of the best post-punk revivalist groups, and arguably the equal of their influences. Whether you stand behind that statement or not, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night is as good as indie rock gets in the late 2000s.

Credit four supportive guys rolling out unkempt riffs at tempos so punky they reveal the guitar line of Joy Division’s 'She Lost Control' for the pop hook it is (with saxophone icing).

Well, though A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night may not hit as viscerally the melodic highs of Nine Times That Same Song, the Swedish group’s second album is surely comparably great.

The squalling sax that wends its way through most of these tracks and Josephine’s joyful, yet solidly unsettled yelps temporarily brings to mind a more professional and spacious Mika Miko, but that similarity mostly traces back to a common debt owed to Kleenex/LiLiPUT--all three bands make the ennui and alienation of second adolescence both incredibly vivid and, strangely, a lot of fun.

Love Is All's boisterous clamor is the real draw here. The band skips over cerebral tricks and hep posturing, instead going straight for adrenalized kicks, and it's a rush that lasts long after the record ends.

Listening to the fiercely adrenalized sophomore disc by Sweden’s Love Is All is like being at the fair for an entire weekend, stuffing your face with cotton candy and taking one too many spins on the Gravitron.

Love is All has refined its basic ideas and yielded a follow-up much more playable than its predecessor.

One song and two minutes longer than its 2005 debut, "Nine Times That Same Song," Love Is All continues to find beauty in haste.

It's a neat trick that Love Is All has pulled off on this record, making the mundane and common just as urgent and real as the enormous and intangible.

Josephine Olausson's Ono-esque delivery remains an acquired taste, but that's surely by design: If she sang any sweeter, Love Is All's songs might evaporate like cotton candy.

It sounds like almost exactly the same record, just not as slap-in-the-face fresh. Still, if it’s more of the same, at least the same is pretty good.

All through this Olausson gives every impression of earnestness; it’s this ability to fashion a hook out of something nobody in their right mind would even think of that ensures a level of sparkle even when the sonic territory is well trodden.

The New Wave rush of her band's second album rarely lets up.

A Hundred Things also contains quieter moments that work surprisingly well for such a loud record, providing a much-needed respite from the nervous scramble of the rest of the album.