Sweet & Crunchy: Love Is All

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

JOSEPHINE OLAUSSON SOUNDED like a cute little frog when she picked up the phone.

"Hey," she croaked from the back of a tour van. "I just woke up. ... I guess I just fell asleep, which is a shame because there are a lot of nice mountains around. We're outside of Seattle ...."

Olausson and her bandmates in Love Is All have have spent a lot of time in vans in America, touring portions of the U.S. three times in 2008. The group also spent plenty of hours traveling around Europe this past summer where "we had four vans in nine days," Olausson said, recalling a seemingly unending stream of breakdowns. "It was the most insane experience ever."

The Swedish band is still relatively unknown here, but it's not for lack of trying or a dearth of critical acclaim. Like its 2005 predecessor, "Nine Times That Same Song," Love Is All's acclaimed new CD, "A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night" (What's Your Rupture?), sounds like all your favorite early '80s post-punk and New Wave records playing at once. There are bits of Missing Persons and Altered Images in Olausson's chirpy but defiant voice, the No Wave funk of James Chance in Ake Stromer's sax stylings, and Nicholaus Sparding's guitar slashes bits from The B-52's, Gang of Four and any other bands who used their six-strings like axes. And bassist Johan Lindwall and drummer Markus Gorsch gallop along with rattling abandon, sounding like an ugly dance party and a sensuous car wreck.

But Love Is All isn't record-collection rock; it's the result of something more serendipitous.

"It was a definitely a happy accident," Olausson said of the band's sound. "We didn't have anything in mind. ... We still don't know why we sound the way we do."

But Olausson did admit to making one request to shape the band's sound: "No cymbals. ... I don't like the sound of it; it's just too noisy. I like toms; that's my favorite. Cymbals are such a simple way of creating a noisy background or the impression of energy." While there are cymbals on both albums, they are submerged among tumbling toms and the waterfall of reverb that drenches the recordings.

It's also fun to play spot the influences with "A Hundred Things...." The cavernous crunch of "Wishing Well" lifts the organ line from The Clean's 1981 song "Tally Ho!," while "When Giants Fall" sounds like Phil Spector in a post-Jesus and Mary Chain world. "A More Uncertain Future" takes the Wall of Sound and adds dub-like effects and melodica melodies to complement the boy-girl vocals. And Olausson's dainty keyboards on "Last Choice" makes it sound like something The Cure forget to release during the "Love Cats" era.

Scrambling atop all that lovely clutter is Olausson's frantic voice, which vibrates with anxious tales of love ("Movie Romance"), being homesick ("When Giants Fall") and being trapped on a cruise ship with a bunch of hip-replacement geezers ("Sea Sick").

"I've never been on a longer cruise, but I can imagine that you would treat yourself to something special and it just ends up being terrible," Olausson said. "I would just be so restless; there's no where to go. ... At least [in a van] the scenery changes, but on a cruise ship it's just that constant water."

While Love Is All's music recalls the best of early '80s post-punk, Olausson worries that the group will outgrow its clattering, energetic sound.

"We're not a young band," fretted Olausson, 33. "Sometimes I spend a lot of time thinking about that, because our music hasn't really matured," she laughed, "and I wonder if we ought to [quit], just not to be embarrassing."

Olausson was mostly kidding, and she says Love Is All has matured, simply because its members are better musicians. "I might not be that much better, but everyone else is," she said. "When I first started playing music, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a key, but I think I can figure that out now."

One thing Olausson hasn't figured out, however, is how to drive. She doesn't have a license, so she leaves all the van driving to her bandmates and her American husband, former Aislers Set leader and Love Is All producer Wyatt Cusick. But ultimately, her lack of road skills is for the best.

"It's perfect for me — as long as I'm in a band, I'm not getting a driver's license," said a more wide-awake Olausson. "I'm actually at the radio station now, and it worked out perfectly: I didn't have to carry anything."

» Rock and Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE; with Darker My Love and The Strange Boys, Sat., Dec. 6, 8:30 p.m., $12; 202-388-7625.

» Read our previous feature on Love Is All here.

Photo courtesy What Are Records?