RSSLove Is All
- Nine Times That Same Song [What's Your Rupture?, 2005] A-
- A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night [What's Your Rupture?, 2008] A-
- Two Thousand and Ten Injuries [Polyvinyl, 2010] A-
Consumer Guide Reviews:
Nine Times That Same Song [What's Your Rupture?, 2005]
A minor, female-fronted Swedish band who may have something to tell us about love when somebody posts the lyrics, but probably won't, and yes, they sing in English, as in "I know we like the same kind of cheese." What they can tell us about is the persistence of punk. Unlike the Hives, who I bet they look down on, they're avant formalists as opposed to pop formalists, twisting funky drumming and weird guitar. Love them for getting excited about these time-honored usages. A-
A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night [What's Your Rupture?, 2008]
As intense one of those hummingbirds that consume twice their own weight every day, Josephine Olausson makes being tiny a virtue. She wants it all, which scares her half to death--her multiple paranoias provide an album title. But tune and tempo conquer all even if love doesn't, and soon, if you listen up, you'll hear her toss her head and move on, jubilant in her capacity for jubilation. Well past thirty now, she's one of those happy punks--in art and, one hopes, in life. A-
Two Thousand and Ten Injuries [Polyvinyl, 2010]
As a punk-loving music journo with a sense of humor, Josephine Olausson is definitely my type. Cute, too. But I'm already taken--and also, I admit, way too old for her. So I was genuinely tickled for her when an opener entitled "Bigger, Bolder" started, "Faster, harder--my love for you," and touched down on a dozen superlatives before it was done cycling through its guitar hooks 2:12 later. But the very next track she was all, "You know that this will never last," and then the next one repeated the same last four words as she, well, ran away. Sigh--she is paranoid, as her last album explained in wondrous detail, and hence maybe not my type after all. On the other hand, there are many more male jerks than female jerks, and most of the latter are annoying at best about their fears. Olausson is funny and candid and multi-hooked and--if her delivery means anything, which this being music rather than life it does--indomitable. So much so that she and her guys have now delivered three straight albums of precisely that description. A-