I just finished watching “My Date with Drew” with fellow columnist Jack LaPorte. In the course of the movie, creepy Drew Barrymore stalker Brian Herzlinger broadly breaks people into two groups: those who love “Grease 2” and those who don’t. That’s a bunch of bullshit and as a creepy stalker of cute Swedish girls, I would like to erroneously separate people into two categories in honor of my upcoming “date” with Love is All’s Josephine Olausson (that’s a lie, but they are going to be here playing at the SLO Art Center on Nov. 19 with Vivan Girls and Nodzzz and I might get to touch her hand or at least be in her general proximity.) There are people who make their beds before they go out on Saturday night just in case and there are people who do not. I would like to think that Love is All’s “oeuvre” is dedicated to the people who do and view every Saturday night as a night to drink, dance and find love or at least someone to cry next to after having sex.
On hot track “Last Choice” off their new album “A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night,” Olausson paints the end of the party perfectly for the bed-making crowd as she describes “people leaving hand in hand as if they are going to some mysterious land.” She follows this with a pitch-perfect description of a walk home with the last person left at the party in pursuit of whatever sexual release is possible. And while that sounds really sad, Olausson never frames it as really sad but instead mixes a desire for adult fun with agoraphobia and keyboards.
Boredom, aging and other not-so-awesome stuff themed first album “Nine Times the Same Song” and the same themes crop up on “A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night”. Olausson captures a sense of daily entrapment on “Sea Sick” as she continuously yells, “I’m bored to death aboard this ship” until the song descends into a dying saxophone meltdown that music nerds who are more elitist than me would label as free jazz inspired.
“Aging Had Never Been His Friend” brought the fear of growing too old on the first album, but on “Hundred Things” the fear begins to pervade most of the album as the band is now three years older and approximately fifty times more likely to be uncomfortable at your frat’s kegger. Additionally, it’s become a hundred times more inappropriate for them to puke up a Taco Bell Triple Steak Burrito at one in the morning. And on a further note, it’s become a million times more draining to chug a Joose afterwards and stay up all night dancing.
But while Love is All seem to realize they also don’t seem to give a fuck. “New Beginnings” opens the album and it’s dirtier, dancier and louder than anything they’ve done before. Olausson yells about desiring “a new beginning” and “a different age” because she’s going home in a taxi far too early. While the lyrics rough up the worn out Lethal Weapon territory of “I’m too old for this shit,” the song never gives in and pounds the desire fervently in a way that immediately proves that as long as your willing to lose all of your dignity, you’re never too old to party.
Make your beds next Wednesday! All the horny dance fiends will be at SLO Art Center ready to sweat and grind and go home together and hopefully not puke up Tonita’s burritos in each other’s beds.