Love Is Hell features guest contributions from Marianne Faithfull and Greg Leisz, as well as Fabrizio Moretti and Leona Naess on certain bonus tracks.

Love Is Hell was initially rejected by Adams's label Lost Highway, who had deemed its sound as "too alternative rock"[1] and considered it not to be commercially viable.

Adams's version of "Wonderwall" was made available as downloadable content for the 2008 video game Guitar Hero World Tour as part of an acoustic pack in January 2009.

He said of the EP that "the writing is tighter, the production cleaner, and the performances more considered" than on Rock n Roll and cited the "pointless" cover of "Wonderwall" as his "only real disappointment".

[10] Referring to Adams as "a synthesist more than a stylist", he compared various songs from the album to multiple rock singer-songwriters and bands such as Jeff Buckley, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and The Smiths, noting that Love Is Hell coproducer John Porter had worked with the latter.

However, while he deemed them both as "tribute albums", Erlewine called Love Is Hell "more carefully considered in its production and writing" than Rock n Roll.

[25] In a negative review, Hartley Goldstein wrote for Pitchfork that "Adams is, at heart, an extremely gifted songwriter" but panned his prolificness, feeling that Love Is Hell is "a collection of preposterously cheerless (and charmless) songs that try much too hard to achieve a poignancy — or anything, really — that might hide their complete insignificance".

However, he cited the songs "English Girls Approximately" and "Hotel Chelsea Nights" as highlights, describing them as "happy accidents" and "moments of clarity" on the record.

1 EP called it "an utterly gloomungous affair with barely a crack of light piercing the lowering clouds of misery", although it praised the bonus track "Halloween".