The Pop Aesthetic

Three albums and not much has changed. Love Is All, the Swedish indie-pop quintet, are still cranking out lo-fi three-minute gems that would fit in perfectly on cassette tape compilations of early punk and grunge. Honestly, if they changed their formula all that much I don’t think people would be interested in them. It was the raw honesty of their playful pop that wooed Love Is All a fanbase to begin with. That said, Two Thousand And Ten Injuries does have noticeably different atmosphere from it’s preceding albums. Nowhere near as frantic as A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night, the guitars have gone from battling screeches to shimmering chorus plucks and the rat-tat-tat snare drums have made way for deeper tom toms. Indeed, it seems as though Love Is All are going along with the example of Vampire Weekend and Islands, by following Paul Simon to Graceland.

Yes, Love Is All have gone ever-so-slightly tropical, presenting a friendlier image than usual (not that they were ever all that threatening, even when singing songs about cat ladies and possibly having killed ex-lovers), but they seem intent to still bring the big fuzzed-out energy that brought them to us in the first place, as evidenced in the very first track:

Faster! Louder! My love for you!
Bigger! Bolder! My love for you!
There’s no sense trying to make that smart, I simply hate every minute that we’re apart!
Taller! Stronger! My love for you!
Wider! Brighter! My love for you!
There’s no point trying to sound smart, I simply hate every minute that we’re apart!

It’s not exactly Shakespeare, but it is fantastically endearing in its straightforwardness.

Not much of a rocker of an album, “The Birds Were Singing With All Their Might” will likely call to mind Phil Collins’ “Sussudio” and “A Side In Bed” is almost slowdance-worthy. The songs are all pleasant enough, but nothing really stands out as something you want to share with your friends, with the possible exception of “Less Than Thrilled” as an example of what Vampire Weekend’s Contra might have sounded like with a female singer.

Two Thousand And Ten Injuries isn’t Love Is All’s worst album so much as it is their third-best album. As background, it is completely inoffensive and even fun and danceable, it just never crosses the threshold into rave-worthy rock and roll.