Dog Knights Productions, Counter Intuitive and Backpack Records are thrilled to give you the newest album from I LOVE YOUR LIFESTYLE, the IDIOTEQ-featured, Malmö/Gothenburg, Sweden based emo indie punk rock band that already stole our hearts with their previous records released between 2013 and 2019. Filled with melodic hooks, engaging instrumentation, catchy pop melodies and nostalgic atmopshere, their third full-length, “No Driver”, will mesmerize you with its masterful songwriting and earworm intensity. To celebrate its release, we have teamed up with the band to give you the full track by track commentary with their thoughts on each and every hit track below!
Stupid
This song is made for rocking out and talks about how stupid this band must look from the outside. We don’t always feel like that but sometimes. We tried to get a bunch of friends together for kind of a ”let´s recognize how awesome it is that we get to hang out and do fun stuff together and it’s because of this stupid band” vibe. We’re so happy our friends David and Vincent from Gulfer wanted to join on vocals! We´re friends because of our stupid bands and they are way cooler than we are so we feel honored. The best part about this song is Jonathans awesome choice of notes on the bass in the last chorus!
Car
The line “I’m not asleep, my mind is still alive” is stolen from a youtube video with Taylor Swift when she’s on anesthesia pills after her lasik surgery. It took forever for Lukas to write vocals for this song simply because he felt that anything he wrote couldn’t match how good the song was, he didn’t want to ruin it. It turned out ok but he still thinks it just should’ve been instrumental. This was the song that really kicked off the ”making an album” process. It’s inspired by lots of different rock music and having a synth present made it a little less ”twin guitar cliché”. The outro is our favorite part on the whole album.
No harm, no foul
This one is the oldest song on the album, it almost made it on ”the movie” but the bridge was too tricky. It sounds easy but it’s very hard to count. The lyrics were in swedish at first but then Lukas couldn’t remember it and didn’t find the paper where he wrote them on so he wrote new lyrics in english instead.
Shilly-Shally
First single and duett between Lukas and his sister Alicia. This song is mostly inspired by Swedish indie rock and not so much by ordinary rock. Joel had a dream about a cat playing a guitar solo so that was the starting point for writing the song. The cat from the dream also made it on to a lot of the artwork so you could say that this is kind of a title track. We thought this was a ballad until Darren at Dog Knights Productions said it wasn’t. The vocal melodies and parts of the lyrics are taken from an old song by Lukas, Joel and his girlfriend Martina’s other band called Lo-Life that never released anything officially.
Align!
One of our favorite songs on the album because it’s a step in a new direction for us. It has even less rock influence than the previous song. The original idea was ”american football-verse with a Pat Metheny group-chorus”. Obviously we’re not good enough players to live up to those claims but it landed us in a cool place. The title is inspired by Joel’s yoga classes online.
I have no point to make
The bridge was very inspired by Lukas´s other band Trachimbrod. Maybe he is confused by it but hopefully happy. Their guitarist Hannes was very proud anyway. For some reason the chorus is one of the hardest things so far for Lukas to sing when we’ve rehearsed. Maybe it´s because his body moves so intensively when the tempo and chords are so uplifting.
Fram och tillbaka
It’s tradition for us to have one song on every album in Swedish. With a kind of lullaby/christmas song vibe it made sense to sing this one in Swedish. It’s also the second duett between Lukas and his sister Alicia on the album. Everything but the vocals are played in Joel´s apartment, therefore garage band plays a big part in the sound of this song. The lyrics are about trying to keep a relationship alive when other people try to tell you it’s a non working situation.
Well, that’s not ideal
The title Is a quote from mr. Lorentz Clark (Cady etc.). He drove us in his van on our first UK tour. After driving into a sign in Manchester, destroying the sign and damaging his van, he just said to himself ”Well, that’s not ideal” and never talked about it again. We like to have a 1-minute banger on every album and this was it.
OK
Sparked by a Ramones listening session. This is the only song on the album we tried out live before recording it.
Inner freakness
This is probably as far as we’ll go experimenting with doing things in different ways than ordinary. We tracked the drums without having a song. It’s also the only song we have ever made without a bass guitar. Only synths and regular guitar. Our dear friend Patrik helped out making some cool synths. Also we didn’t use guitar amps, the distorted guitars are played straight into the interface with garage band overdrive maxed out. The goal was to make this song 0% emo but then we did vocals and it was at least 60% emo. It’s ok because it felt appropriate, a mix between old and new. We had lots of fun doing it!
Making nothing out of something
Was made to be a closer. The lyrics are simply about not having ANYTHING more to write about, therefore the album can´t go on anymore.
