Don't be fooled by the name; it may be part of a lyric made famous by the most celebrated Fab Four in music, but Love Is All have more in common with the actual source of their moniker (a song of the same name taken from The Rapture's 2003 debut).It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that the Swedish quintet - fronted by the piercing punk princess Josephine Olausson - relate more to the New Yorkers' dance-punk ethic than the elementary pop of the former; an observation that's cemented upon every listen. At just over thirty minutes long, Nine Times That Same Song is hardly an epic in any sense of the word; yet it duly dispenses healthy doses of new wave, grainy punk and buoyant indie in a delightfully eccentric fashion. Opener Talk Talk Talk Talk sounds like a Blondie/Bloc Party/Dexy's Midnight Runners mule all springy basslines, sleazy saxaphone and stuttering enunciations; the fabulous Busy Doing Nothing is a dance-driven track that recalls Yeah Yeah Yeah's Date With The Night, while the group vocals on the bittersweet pop of Make Out Fall Out Make Up and bass-centric thumper Felt Tip brandish the band's unrelenting energy like a life-sized bottle of Lucozade. When that energy does fitfully relent, the results are amiable; The Sundays-esque Turn the Radio Off is wistfully dreamy, and Turn the TV Off's expansive instrumentation equally appealing. However, Love Is All's speciality is very obviously tersely frenetic, staccato-drenched indie tunes to dance to, and while Olausson's clipped accent and Karen O/Bjork-style yelp makes it occasionally hard to decipher lyrics, the ones that are coherent (example: 'I keep the one I love in the freezer') set the tone adeptly. Both a progressive and consistent album, Nine Times That Same Song is anything but (it's ten songs, for starters); for the time being, at the very least, all you need to know is that Love Is All is all you need.
