The opening salvo of Love is All’s Two Thousand and Ten Injuries could well have been cribbed straight from The Strokes’ game-changing This Is It. ‘Bigger, Bolder’ announces itself with same chugging one-note guitar riff as Last Nite, the wheedling lead work a dead ringer to Albert Hammond Jr. It’s in more or less in that opening ten seconds that the similarities end, the introduction of a bobbling bassline the first clue Love Is All are reaching for something far removed then The Strokes managed in their stunted pomp.
Gushingly described by Pitchfork as one of the era's punk greats, Love is All have always had aspirations beyond the garage rock template. For starters, Josephine Olausson is the kind of singer that cries out to be noticed. Hers is a yelp that can arouse ambivalence but more often praise, her lyrics putting her alongside a proud lineage of crucial female singers.
An ebullient mix of haphazard sweetheart and pored-over confessional, little is lost in translation here, Olausson veering from the comic: "Straight out of bed / I smashed my head on a bookshelf!"; to pining nostalgia: “I know I was acting a fool/ I remember you calling me cruel/ Well that was ages ago/ Oh how I wish I could prove how I've grown."
More than just cutesy pop, Two Thousand and Ten Injuries is richly varied, the yearning fiddle-strum of ‘Less Than Thrilled’ the perfect foil to Olausson’s high-pitched wit: “I didn’t expect you to be here/And now I don’t know what to say/I’m less than thrilled you’re OK.”
Delivered with the kind of ramshackle indie charm all bit unheard of recently, don’t be fooled by the adolescent veneer – there are nuggets aplenty of plain-spoken wisdom and nagging hooks throughout, Love is All continuing to develop along ever exciting lines on their album number three.
Words : Finn Scott Delany
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