There's a memorable scene in the otherwise unmemorable 1984 Steve Martin comedy The Lonely Guy where Martin's single-guy protagonist enters a posh restaurant and politely requests a table for one, only to have a spotlight follow him to his seat and illuminate his loserdom for a roomful of dumbstruck diners. As Josephine Olausson illustrates on the new Love Is All album, that feeling isn't exclusive to sad-sack middle-aged bachelors; you can be the cute, charismatic frontwoman for an internationally lauded Swedish indie band and not only feel intense loneliness, but feel like everyone around you is enjoying the sight of your loneliness. In other words, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night is a logical sequel to her band's 2005 debut Nine Times That Same Song, wherein she follows the cycle of making out and falling out by talking us through the subsequent sadness of single life. Few bands are better at conveying that sense of feeling alone in the crowd, with Olausson's inner monologues fighting to be heard over the din of her band's sax-blasted garage-disco.
Sonically speaking, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night is a classic second album, in the tradition of the Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope or the Strokes' Room on Fire: It may not deliver the same jolt as its predecessor, but its somewhat cleaner production highlights Love Is All's strengthened pop prowess. As predictable as that move may be, it wasn't entirely anticipated by the band's interim endeavors: Since the release of Nine Times, Love Is All have been eager to mess around with other peoples' songs (as heard on the tour-only Covers EP), or enlist other artists to mess with their own (the Mixed Up remix disc)-- both of which indicated a certain fatigue with their beserker-pop aesthetic. Olausson re-enforces that idea on "Sea Sick", the new album's most self-referential track, rehashing the theme and breakdown of the group's signature single "Busy Doing Nothing" while shouting, "I'm bored to death of all this shit!" But Love Is All have made progress, too, as charted in hyperactive garage-rockers like "Movie Romance", where Olausson's rant about bullshit big-screen depictions of love is lent a humorously self-deprecating context by the song's jittery, accelerated guitar riff; the desperation described on first single "Wishing Well" is likewise leavened by a zippy organ refrain lifted wholesale from the Clean's charming 1981 single "Tally Ho!" But even in the midst of such brazen thievery, Olausson's growth as a storyteller is undeniable. Where she once favored itemized phrases and staccato shrieks, her writing here offers richly detailed first-person vignettes that carefully straddle the line between self-absorbed and sympathetic; no doubt, the sleigh-belled disco of "Last Choice"-- which suggests that any one-night stand is better than going home alone-- is perfectly timed for the coming season of regretful holiday-party hookups.
Short of turning into the Swedish indie version of "Sex and the City", A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night's closing stretch emphasizes that the repercussions of sleeping in a perpetually empty bed are more psychological than physical, with Olaussen convincingly conveying the dangers of a mind left to wander. By the time we hit the twitchy punk rumble "Big Bangs, Black Holes, Meteorites"-- just three of the insomnia-inducing phenomena accounted for in this album's title-- her frustration has given way to pure hypochondria and agoraphobia, while the equally manic and misanthropic closer "19 Floors" quantifies those anxieties in relation to her highrise living arrangement ("19 floors and a thousand doors, and one of them is mine, a million names don't seem the same"), as the song's strident anti-socialism ("I don't want to walk my neighbor's dog and I can't lend a cup of milk") culminates in a sax-squawked flame-out. A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night may pick up where the band left off on Nine Times That Same Song, but by its conclusion, we see the band adopting a new self-defining philosophy: Hate is all.
