Love Is Not All

Watch out: “Love is All” will soon be scratched into the binders of punk-ish high school girls across America, but don’t let them fool you. Nine Times That Same Song shouldn’t make its way into your collection. This Swedish export might co-opt the cut-and-paste look and song titles of a retro-punk act, but it has the political precision of a hyper-leftist’s brainwashed five-year-old: just enough to name one song “Turn the TV Off” and another one “Turn the Radio Off.” I wouldn’t mind these facile politics if the band sounded better, but the bad songs (“Talk Talk Talk Talk”) are terrible, and the good ones (“Make Out Fall Out Make Up”) were unpleasantly catchy, like the ice-cream-man song or an Avril Lavigne single. My friend Ali commented that these guys sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the Hot Topic set, and it’s true… for now, they’re all aesthetics, no core.