If love is all (and also all you need), can someone explain why Paul McCartney is single again?
A country traditionally associated with metal, electropop and one that usually conjures images of naked people riding bicycles on flat roads on their way to the sauna, Sweden's latest export is Love Is All, a five-piece from Gothenburg.
'Busy Doing Nothing' is all scratchy guitars, clashing cymbals, melodic bass, squawking saxophone and squealed vocals. If all this sounds familiar, that's because it is. It seems the influence of YYY's spreads wider than an elephant run over by a monster truck and what seemed a fresh, exhilarating and coruscating debut is in danger of being fleeced over and over again.
Don't get me wrong: 'Busy Doing Nothing' is an okay single - but it's nothing extra special - it's nothing new; this sort of stuff's been done before - and better. I mean I understand that it ain't Love Is All's fault that their particular sound is proliferating through every basement club at a speed comparable to an angry whippet on coke but this track doesn't raise the bar or bring anything new to the post-punk-new-wave party.
The album, 'Nine Times That Same Song' will undoubtedly score big with the ultra-trendy and indeed, I may be forced to eat my words if they turn out to be the Next BIG Thing. I hope so. I also hope that the larger canvas of a full-length disk will afford Love Is All the opportunity to prove they've got both the extensive musical palette attributed to them and the talent to apply it.
I don't mind being wrong. I mind being bored. I was bored.