I'm Sorry If The Music's Too Loud

For some reason Love Is All remind me of Huggy Bear, albeit minus the overt feminism and with a wailing sax. I guess it's mostly to do with Josephine's vocal style. Back in 2002 I was in that second hand record store on Berwick St in Soho, the one that is a few doors down from Selectadisc, which is now Sister Ray (the original Sister Ray is now gone), and found the Huggy Bear album "Taking The Rough With The Smooch". I only had a couple of Huggy Bear 7"s so I thought I'd purchase it. When I took it to the counter the girl said "Oh this is great, we were just listening to it the other day". She then went to locate disc only to return saying that she couldn't find it! She took my number and said she'd call me when it turned up. I'm still waiting. I have a theory she actually knew damn well where the disc was, but she just didn't want to sell it to me because it was the only copy they had and it is extremely rare. Well I say that's fucking unprofessional! Although I have their best song; Her Jazz on 7", I don't have a record player, and I can't find an MP3 of it anywhere. I'm still smarting to this day.

Last night I went and saw Love Is All and quite frankly it was one of the best gigs I've seen in a long time. Now I hate the term "dance-punk", as it's been attributed to so many shit bands. And I also hate the current post-punk revival; it's a superficial appropriation, with an MTV sheen, that replaces a significant musical and cultural movement with a desire to pick up chicks. It makes me want to bang their fuckwitted skinny jeaned heads together. Love Is All, however, transcend all this. The music they play isn't for fashion, they play the music they enjoy and respect.





It's not often that I find myself converted by a show, while I was already a reasonable sized fan of the band, I now believe that I am a rather large fan of them.
The gig was very short, the band only write very short songs, but this was fine with me as I hate standing for long periods. And it meant that I was able to be home and tucked up in bed by 1am