The Shout Out Louds

The latest offering from Swedish outfit The Shout Out Louds is a summer pop masterpiece that has driving-to-the-beach-with-the-windows-open stamped all over it. Although it released in February this year, the band is now gearing up to come out and play at some of our summer festivals.

“It’s really good to be able to be here in Australia during the summers,” says Eric, drummer for the Shout Out Louds. For their summer pop sounds I couldn’t agree more. Mentioning in their album review that it had come out too late to make an impact in Australia as we were just coming out of our summer looks like the band took note of that and toured the album in the northern hemisphere for their summer and then finish it up in Australia for our Peats Ridge Festival, Pyramid Rock Festival and No Years Festival in Brisbane.

Most of the songs from this album were originally created in Melbourne where Adam, the singer and principle songwriter lived for a while writing the album. “Yeah, he used to send songs to us from there and we’d hear them before he came back to Sweden. Most were not finished songs but there were lots of ideas. Some were more or less done but then we worked on them for a couple of months here before we started recording them.” When I asked if this is how they normally worked, Eric said “It’s not how we always work on an album but this time around it felt natural to do it that way.” The latest album sounds more like a band playing together live as a unit and thus the songs have a more simplistic stripped down feel to them. “It wasn’t a conscious way to do it like that, from our side we were band and we were playing live in the studio, so that’s how it sounded."

One of the standout tracks from the album is “Too late, too slow” which is a gentle meandering track with soft trumpets ends the album. Apparently this little gem was not a simple track to create. “Col came up with the idea for the trumpets in that last song. We hadn’t really figured it out and when we recorded it in Seattle we had to do it several times. We were trying to get the vibe of it going and we just couldn’t get it. In the end we rebuilt the drum kit so I was now standing with just the snare and kick and we finally got it. We kept working on it in Stockholm when Phil (producer) came over.” Being such a beautiful way to end the album I asked if it was always going to be there at the end. “We weren’t sure if it was going to be on the album at all when we started writing it. But by the end of finishing the record, it of course was the perfect place to put it.”

On tour, the band don’t have many rituals but in the US it became an accidental ritual to play Dreams by Fleetwood Mac before going on stage. “It’s not really a song to get you energised before a show but it seemed to work for us.” The band now into their third record I asked if it was hard to choose songs to play. “We don’t have a set of songs that we only play during a tour we just play the songs we like the most at the time. It’s nice now that we have three albums, it’s much more fun. There is more to choose from.” Not being able to get any sneak peaks of what will be played when they come here I asked what Eric’s favourite songs to play live were. “I really like Hard Rain from our last album. It is not a very difficult song to play, I pretty much play the same thing throughout. I like the way we have to build the song up. It’s a bit like Walls from this record too. I like how we build it up.” Walls will definitely be one to listen out for on the radio and live I’m sure it will be a huge favourite for years to come. With it’s small but persistent pounding in the beginning it builds as Eric says to a song that wont let up and will have you compulsively dancing and singing along.

Shout Out Louds don’t seem to be doing any side shows this time around, but I recommend you try and watch them perform at one of these festivals. Shout Out Louds have a knack for writing excellent, intelligent pop songs and their new material will certainly have you dancing all summer.

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