There Is Always Room For More Etcetera

Listening to Love Is All’s Two Thousand And Ten Injuries. Can’t get a hook in this one. Need to start jotting things down, need to make a list:

Guitar: Yeah, and mostly effective.

Bass: Damn effective.

Keyboards: Present in nearly every track. Nice Lo-Fi ambiance.

Sax: Cool surprise. Expertly placed sub-prime squawk. Leaves me wanting more.

Singer: Let’s discuss…

Josephine Olausson plays the keyboards; she composed these tracks and gave them a voice. That voice…it takes some getting used to. I can’t really put it into words, but how you end up feeling about her voice will determine how you feel about this band. She sings/hollers/emotes in a high pitch with child-like exaggeration. She is the POLARIZING ELEMENT in this band. Yer gonna love her, or yer gonna wanna wrap her up in duct tape and put her on a truck to Utah.

The INSTANT the sound of Ms. Olausson’s voice filled up my earholes, I thought of Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto, FOR WHOM MY LOVE KNOWS NO BOUNDS. Miho Hatori has an even more pronounced accent, sings/hollers/emotes way harder than Josephine Olausson, but the issue of polarization never even occurred to me because it was love at first sound. And sight! Back in 1997, there was a brilliantly funny teevee show on Comedy Central called Viva Variety, and it was there that I had my first Miho Hatori experience. Cibo Matto did “Birthday Cake” and Hattori was jumping up and down around the stage in a knee-length skirt and brown go-go platforms screaming “SHUT UP WHEN YOU EAT!”

Josephine Olausson has what Miho Hattori has… creative energy to burn. For that reason, “Two Thousand And Ten Injuries” is worth at least a half-dozen listens. There’s a party in her heart, and she’s figured out a way to record it.