by Tim Williams – A&SB Contributor
One of my many personal embarrassments, sure to be mocked by all ‘round the Gluttony Day table this year, is my complete ignorance of lineage. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m half-Swedish. This I proclaim with such pride that people make the mistake of asking a follow-up, which neatly ties my dynastic ambivalence to my staggering inability to place things on a plane, let alone a elliptical sphere. I usually say, “Yeah, you know, from around Stockholm,” and then run to the nearest Wikipedia-enabled terminal to make sure Stockholm is still in Sweden.

So you’d think when the Swindie band Love is All caught my eye, I’d atone by devoting this blog post to their uniquely Scandinavian roots. I can tell you they are from Gothenburg, and I have looked at a dot with that eponymous title on an array of Google Image Search maps. Also, we have Gothenburg metal to thank for Metalocalypse, so it must be alright.

This is the problem with history. That background is profoundly irrelevant to Love is All, which is indie rock through and through. Which is to say, its influences are so diverse and crossbred as to make any namedrop pointless beyond saying they have a predilection for Hendrix-esque guitar solos that overtake all other musical ideas. Indie music is just the eras of rock dismembered and put back together with the legs where the arms should be (As Love is All puts it, “The same song is on repeat/ and inappropriately upbeat”), and thus I, the reviewer, am totally worthless in the postmodern digital age.

The slow Arcade Fire chorus chanting, the runaway acid jazz saxophone skronking, the zeal of The Doors and the zest of The Ramones — I could weave together an improbable backstory, or you could just click away and hear them all roll around your inner ear like shoes in a dryer.

It comes down to this. Is their new album, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night, a winner? Yes, yes it is. Is it Swedish? Hell if I know.

Maybe over Thanksgiving I’ll ask the experts. Grandma will inevitably say, “That’s different.” But let’s pretend that buried behind the tinkling glockenspiel and power punk guitars, she’ll find an indivisible essence, a melody to recall an Old World accordion, pulsing with unironic joy.