From Sweden with love - BUZZ BANDS - Los Angeles Times

Surprising even themselves

As far as indie-rock exports go, Sweden is the new Canada. Excellent albums by Peter Bjorn and John, the Knife and Lonely, Dear are all beginning to prick up American ears this year. But one of the best of them, the debut from the feisty, sax-inflected party-punkers Love Is All, was essentially a happy accident.

"We never even intended to make a record," said singer Josephine Olausson. "When the guy who runs the label [New York-based What's Your Rupture?] agreed to release it, we would have been satisfied selling 500 copies and getting a few e-mails."

The five-piece group, which plays the Echo on Friday, packs the 10 tracks on "Nine Times That Same Song" with so much stylish yelping and exuberant mod guitar that even lines like "I keep the one I love in the freezer" sound like come-ons. Olausson formed the band with guitarist Nicholaus Sparding and drummer Markus Görsch in 2003, while riding the train home from the breakup of their old group Girlfrendo. Though they have all the elements for hipster blog-baiting (a cute singer, a major Mark E. Smith crush and several members who moonlight as music journalists in Sweden), the warm reception that American audiences have given their live sets surprised even them.

"We played the Knitting Factory in New York and didn't expect anything," Olausson said. "But it was sold out, people were going crazy, the floor was bouncing up and down."

What started as a fun weekend project soon became a full-time occupation, with all five members — including bassist Johan Lindwall and sax man Fredrik Eriksson — quitting their jobs to tour internationally full-time, a prospect that left Olausson "really nervous." But as they wind through the U.S. and Europe, at heart they're still kids on holiday.

"Last night we were at Ben's Chili Bowl in D.C., and Johan drank a whole bottle of hot sauce," Olausson said. "We were sure he was going to puke."

On Mars, there are no genres

Electronica. Industrial. Pop. Breakbeat. Jazz. Classical. To many musicians, these genres are separate countries that can't be traversed in the same album, or even from album to album by the same band.

For Mouse on Mars, the German duo of Andi Toma and Jan St.Werner, these genre lines are nothing more than smoke screens. Since its 1994 debut album, "Vulvaland," one of the firing shots of the IDM, post-techno movement, Mouse on Mars has rejoiced in taking an entire record store and shoving it into the blender. For its live shows — tonight's will be at the Echo — that blender gets cranked to the max.

Temporarily residing in Pacific Palisades with his girlfriend and baby, St.Werner says MoM's live shows function as a hyperkinetic collaboration with the audience. "Live is so immediate. It's adrenaline, it's our energy.... You're in a feedback loop with the audience. You take what they give you and throw it back to them. Then you have a certain entropy that oscillates at its own frequency."

On its latest release, "Varcharz," Mouse on Mars wanted to mimic the harsh, anarchic energy of their live shows.

For every moment they dive headlong into sweaty disco-pop, they pull back into iron-ore industrial beats. Each musical idea has its inverse, or at least a good number of compelling juxtapositions.

St.Werner thinks the compositions are strengthened by the all-encompassing range: "There's a lot of backlash within one album and often within one track. It's a way to test the durability of an idea. It makes it more stable, I think. If things grow in odd ways, then it's more persistent than the thing that's well-shaped and straight-lined."

The schisms and conceptual deconstruction of "Varcharz" reflects the duo's personality: temperamental, impatient and inconsistent, in all the best ways.

Fast Forward

Touts: Frosty local indie-poppers Great Northern begin a monthlong residency at the Echo on Monday, as does the dreamy orchestral combo Let's Go Sailing on Monday at Spaceland.... If gothic British dance-punk propelled by an organist named Spider Webb makes you giddy, you can get it at Safari Sam's on Tuesday when the Horrors headline. But if your tastes run more toward gossamer shoegaze, check out San Francisco's Love Like Fire on Friday night at El Cid, with spunky Weezer-ish punkers OK Stranger opening.... And we wish you luck getting tickets to the sold-out electro extravaganza of the Knife at the El Rey Theatre on Saturday.

-- August Brown and Margaret Wappler

Recommended downloads

Download Love Is All's "Talk Talk Talk Talk" at www.loveisall.se/listen.html

Stream Mouse on Mars' "Varcharz Medley" at www.myspace.com/mouseonmars