Running out of Love

Running Out Of Love isn’t the sound of hectoring; it’s The Radio Dept. getting on with the business of making important records, being one of the most challenging, uncompromising and rewarding bands we have and proving that political music is as vital as ever.

This is a darker, more direct take from a band that sees in pop music a place to distill their ideas.

While Running Out of Love may contain a bit less fizz than its predecessor, it's supplanted by evidence of the band's artistic growth over the past six years.

Easily the most vibrant they've ever sounded. [No. 137, p.59]

This is a record that has finally seen the light of day after a bitter dispute between the band and their label. That something so beautiful and politically charged can emerge from the embers of conflict can only be a positive thing.

Running Out of Love is an album that, without paying attention to it, can slip easily into the background as balmy sonic wallpaper. However, once you give the album the proper attention it deserves, it reveals itself to be a startling and incensed document of two men who believe that music still has the social utility to affect change.

Running Out of Love is another essential release from one of the finest indie pop bands this side of the 21st century.

It may even be their most consistently impressive and overall most cohesive record to date.

Even though it's rammed full like a powder keg of discontentment, the opinions expressed on Running Out of Love don't stop it from being the elusive indie pop band's most unified record to date.

Despite these potentially dour themes, Running Out Of Love is far from a gloom-fest, couched as it is in disco and '80s-influenced electronica. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Angry, acquiescent and apathetic all at once, Running Out Of Love is an ideal album for our anxious times.

What makes this record so refreshing is its unabashed ambition, the sound of a band rejecting indie-darling complacency for riskier, more mature territory. And the gamble more than pays off.

Running Out of Love is absolutely true to the duo’s style and their assessment of today’s Sweden.

Rather than risk nestling ever-deeper into their cushy role as purveyors of twee-approved, candied indie-rock, The Radio Dept. have opted for a collection of songs that is as decidedly unapologetic as it is cemented in political sludge.

The quality of dialogue on display is--though well-intentioned--kitsch and sustained by hollow jingoisms. The result is something benevolent, musically interesting and occasionally provocative, but rather too one-dimensional thematically to overcome its slightness.