Last Choice

Album review

Love Is All's late 2008 album A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night was a raucous blast of energetic, noisy post-post-punk that reduced the amount of noise in their sound (compared to their first album) but compensated with focused songwriting and intense performances. The follow-up Last Choice EP is headed by one of the highlights of the album, the disco-y tale of late-night woe "Last Choice," and features five new songs that show that the band is moving farther away from the rattle and clatter of their initial approach and heading toward something more subtle and thoughtful, but still exciting and vital. The tracks were recorded again with Wyatt Cusick (who recorded and mixed Hundred Things), and taken together sound less like B-sides or cast-off tracks, and more like the foundation of a great album. It's almost too bad they didn't record another handful of songs and just release them as their next LP. Songs like the rousing "Vans Vans Vans" (which laments the band's bad luck with touring vans), the Flying Nun-influenced "From Your Corner," or the lover's quarrel, "Jealousy" (which brings back memories of Girlfrendo), are the equal of anything the band has recorded to date. They point to a bright future and make the EP an essential purchase for fans of the group and anyone who likes their pop spiky, punchy, and really, really good.

© Tim Sendra /TiVo