They’re still cooped up and bummed out, but the Swedish emo revivalists’ third album also boasts longer songs with stronger verses and a keener grasp of sequencing and flow.
ILove Your Lifestyle don’t go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary. On the title track from 2019’s The Movie, frontman Lukas Feurst enjoyed the natural splendor of his Swedish homeland through his television screen, watching movies about camping until the trash piled up too high to ignore. “Dreamy Dreams” made getting home and going to bed sound like the highest possible reward for another day of pretending like you were someone who actually belonged in an office. Those two songs were preceded by another titled “Indoor Living.” Barring a massive attitude adjustment in the past 18 months, I Love Your Lifestyle were going to make an album suited for global indoor living whether they intended to or not. At the beginning of the pandemic, grim introverts joked that they’ve been training for quarantine their whole lives; on No Driver, I Love Your Lifestyle are likewise prepared to make the best of it.
Oh, and there’s been no massive attitude shift. “This song is made for rocking out,” they said of No Driver’s opening track, “and talks about how stupid this band must look from the outside.” Fair enough: “Stupid” uses the common tools bequeathed from pop-metal to emo—tapping riffs, massed harmonies—with the kind of self-deprecation that can be life-affirming in small enough groups. Gulfer provide backup vocals in a show of fourth-wave solidarity, underlining how I Love Your Lifestyle remain an anomaly of both time and geography. At the turn of the 2010s, this kind of music could convince a couple dozen kids in a Philly basement that they were witnessing the world’s best-kept secret. These days, a first press vinyl of Glocca Morra’s Just Married might run you over $400.
No Driver appears inspired by the same set of bummer personal circumstances as The Movie: “Car” is a sequel to “Dreamy Dreams” where not having a job doesn’t make sleeping all day sound any less appealing, while “Inner Freakness” recoils at even the possibility of roommates. But I Love Your Lifestyle are more in tune with their powers; they had previously made one song longer than five minutes, a number that quadruples on the first half of No Driver. Everything likeable about The Movie has been supersized: Verses are no longer speedbumps, but carefully constructed ramps that give Feurst enough momentum to leap towards chorus melodies at the absolute limits of his range. Guitar leads are now doubled in glam-rock harmonies, “No Harm, No Foul” swaps lines in English and Swedish, and “Align!” simultaneously evokes the lovesick innocence of American Football’s first album and the jazzy sophistication of their third.
If the second half of No Driver can’t quite sustain those peaks, the less ambitious tracks show a keener grasp of sequencing and flow. The 46-second thrasher “Well, That’s Not Ideal” comes just after the band’s signature Swedish-language track (“Fram Och Tillbaka”) regales itself with King’s Quest prog fanfare; the Tokyo Police Club fanfic “OK” arrives to reiterate the underappreciated bridge between blog-rock and revival-era emo. These guys can’t not be emo even when they try: The mesmerizing krautrock groove of “Inner Freakness” frees Feurst to take inventory of his failures until he’s buried in paperwork, and even though ILYL aimed “to make this song 0 percent emo,” they estimate it’s “at least 60.”
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Feurst might be willing to start digging his way out. No Driver closes with “Making Nothing Out of Something,” which isn’t about an inferiority complex. Rather, this song ends the album because it’s when Feurst admits he’s finally run out of things to say about boredom. Hell, he might actually have to leave the house at some point for new material. The post-quarantine I Love Your Lifestyle album will either break big or break them.
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