I Love Your Lifestyle

About

There’s a utopian dreaminess to the Gothenburg music scene in Sweden that typically trickles down even to the punk acts. But even in paradise, apparently someone’s gotta make copies and take out the trash, and that’s where I Love Your Lifestyle comes in. On The Movie, they sound like they’ve come out swinging from a south Philly basement only to slump back after yet another soul-sucking day at work. They make commiseration rock, proceeding from the understanding that the depression borne from a shitty job and an utter lack of romantic prospects is universal.

Their 2016 debut We Go Way Back made them one of the leading figures of the international wing of the ongoing emo revival—bands for whom Algernon Cadwallader and Glocca Morra are primary sources, as opposed to Cap’n Jazz. It’s heartening to see the remarkable digital footprint of bands that never got much notice in their prime, as kids from Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Italy and Russia wear the same dad hats and shorts, singing about convenience stores while playing tapping solos in odd time signatures as if they were from any suburb in Middle America. In so doing, they avail themselves of the scene’s welcoming leniency, which explains how a math-rock band named Chinese Football is actually opening for the real thing instead of getting mocked or sued out of existence.

Having mastered 2008 simulacra, ILYL have advanced to something genuinely exciting on its own terms—a combustible flashpoint where emo’s unhinged rhythms meets indie-pop song forms. “Failing again, so many failures in a row,” Lukas Feurst sings on the album’s very first line, and the verse on “Imagination Station” ends right there. Really, what else is there to say? Why bother waiting to get to the chorus, especially when it’s specifically about being tired of waiting for something to change? “Adrenaline Rush to Kill My Crush” takes a similarly oblong approach to pop structure, hinting at a version of “Friday I’m in Love,” where no one ever gets past hump day.

- Ian Cohen // Pitchfork