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ON THE COUCH WITH: Shout Out Louds

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Swedish indie-pop band Shout Out Louds will touch down in early May, playing shows in Sydney and Melbourne on the back of their debut album Howl Howl Gaff Gaff. Access All Areas.net.au spoke to Adam, the singer, on a long distance call from his hometown of Stockholm.

Access All Areas.net.au: Hey, how are you doing?

Shout Out Louds (Adam): Pretty good. I just woke up. What time is it there?

Access All Areas.net.au: About 6:30pm.

Shout Out Louds (Adam): Oh, okay.

Access All Areas.net.au: How do you feel about touring Australia?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): We’re excited to be coming. I think some of us have been there when we were young, but not as a band.

Access All Areas.net.au: What do you know about Australian music?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): Not a lot. I’ve heard Architecture in Helsinki and a band called Cut Copy, I think. And of course Natalie Imbruglia.

Access All Areas.net.au: How would you explain your music to someone who may not have heard it?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): I hate that question; it’s difficult to answer. If I had to, I would say alternative pop.

Access All Areas.net.au: Who would you name as your influences?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): Bryan Wilson. There’s so much, from different times, it’s hard to answer. I think I’m influenced by time, the present time. At the moment I’m happy to be home so I’m inspired by that. I’m also listening to electronica so at the moment I’m inspired by that, but I don’t think the band will start to sound like that.

Access All Areas.net.au: Do you have any favourite tracks of your new album?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): I like the last song. It’s good to play live because I get to play drums.

Access All Areas.net.au: So, do you prefer playing live to recording?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): Live. But after 14 months of touring I’m looking forward to some studio work. In the studio it’s just you and the sound.

Access All Areas.net.au: What can your Australian fans expect from your live show?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): We’re very excited to be playing in Australia. It’s gonna explode!

Access All Areas.net.au: Do you have a favourite live show?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): I don’t know, they get pretty blurry. We played a show in New York before Christmas, that was pretty good. We got to tour with the Pogues in the US. They were some pretty great shows.

Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve played a few festivals, especially in Scandinavia. Do you prefer playing your own shows or festivals?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): Yeah, we’ve played some festivals in Scandinavia and one in the US and in we will play one in the UK soon too. The good thing about festivals is that you can play a show and then go off and watch a show. They’re pretty hectic but the atmosphere is great.

Access All Areas.net.au: How do you feel about the music scene in Sweden?
Shout Out Louds (Adam): It’s inspiring. There are some great new bands and labels are putting out new bands and new sounds. They’re all different, which is good because it pushes you to come up with something new.

Access All Areas.net.au: Thanks for the chat. We look forward to seeing you.
Shout Out Louds (Adam): Thanks. Is it cold in Australia in May? We look forward to coming there!

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Twenty six year old singer and guitarist Adam Olenius describes the music of Shout Out Louds, the band he formed with four old friends from Stockholm, as a "desperate shout." It's a surge of romance and urgency, happy and sad, upbeat and lingering, danceable and reflective, and fueled throughout with gut level emotion.

Before any of this coalesced, however, Shout Out Louds were just five friends piecing together their respective adulthoods in their hometown, Sweden's capital, all with strong notions about art, passion, and indie rock. A picturesque metropolis made up of bridges, parks, modern and classical architecture, and a blazing nightlife, Stockholm serves as an especially ripe setting for European bands reared on American music. For Shout Out Louds, all it took was a spark, a momentary huddle, and the idea that music could be grown, not constructed.

In 2001, Adam and guitarist Carl von Arbin were enrolled in the same art school, learning about graphic design. Bassist Ted Malmros was making his way through a film program. Drummer Eric Edman was studying economics. And keyboardist Bebban Stenborg (the lone girl among boys) was putting the finishing touches on a fantastical short story about a lion tamer. But it was toward the end of the year that Adam and Ted found themselves talking excitedly at a party about maybe, possibly starting a band. Adam had been in bands before, but always felt that a piece was missing an organic element, something having less to do with the standard band dynamic of musicians playing off other and more to do with friends exploring together. The fact that Ted couldn't even really play an instrument, in retrospect, was a good thing.

So Adam set himself to the job of teaching Ted to play the bass. "I think it's a very real way to do it," Adam explains. "I was excited to start over again, from the very beginning. I felt like I was 12 years old again." Soon afterwards, they brought Carl into the loop, and the resulting threesome began recording '60s, and American indie inspired songs backed by a temperamental drum machine (the bossa nova setting was an early favorite). When the time came to summon a real drummer, Adam placed a call to Eric, with whom he had played in a band before.

Songs were written. A demo was recorded. They booked their first show for February of 2002, at a small jazz club packed with about a hundred people, where they performed a whopping three songs the band's entire catalogue up to that point. In the end of 2002 a demo version of the song "Very Loud" was included on Swedish music magazine Sonic's cd sampler and quickly became the most asked about song in the history of the magazine.

In the early days the band would arbitrarily pick friends to play a 70s Moog synthesizer during shows. But as the instrument quickly became an indispensable part of the group's distinct brand of swelling, modern yet folky pop, Shout Out Louds turned to their good friend Bebban, a classically trained pianist with a major Roky Erickson fixation.

What followed over the next two and a half years was a steady stream of mostly Scandinavian releases, beginning with 100, a four song EP released in early 2003 and culminating in their debut full length, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff. The Scandinavian version of this record was released on the band's Swedish label, Bud Fox Recordings, in October of 2003 to widespread critical acclaim. And thanks to the Internet, word of mouth and indie record stores around the world, the band quickly garnered an international fanbase.

The international version of Howl Howl Gaff Gaff features five new songs, including tracks from 2004 EP Oh Sweetheart and new mixes. Produced by Ronald Bood and Bjorn Yttling with Shout Out Louds.

The title, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, was actually the name of the band's first demo and comes from one of Adam's illustrations depicting two wolves howling at the top of their lungs (where the band also got its name, incidentally), which he incorporated as an official Shout Out Louds stamp on all band paraphernalia. The "gaff gaff" part comes from Russia’s onomatopoeic equivalent to "woof woof." "So it's Russian dogs and Swedish wolves," Adam explains matter of factly. In any case, it's a true survey of the band's entire career, beginning with the weathered but hopeful "The Comeback," the first song they ever wrote, and ending with ambitious, crescendo building "Seagull," recorded just last year. "I like contrasts," says Adam. "And I'm definitely not afraid to sound romantic, especially if I can still be a bit sinister. I like to put chaos into a very simple pop song," he adds.

At the heart of the music of Shout Out Louds is honesty and simplicity, not in a musical sense, necessarily, but in the personal sense of cutting directly an emotional core. Drunk. 3 a.m. Lovesick. Inspired. Electrified. For Adam, the experience of Howl Howl Gaff Gaff is romantic in a broad way wrapped up in pure moments some sad, some hopeful, and some dance worthy, none of which are mutually exclusive. The danger, he says, is to over think yourself to the point at which you lose a real connection to those moments.

"It's always been really important to us be directly involved in all aspects of what we do, not just the music." says Adam. "We do our own videos, artwork... everything. We're allergic to the way the music business can put an easy to swallow gloss on everything, like cake decoration. That's just not for us."

And from the outset Shout Out Louds have been directly involved in shaping their own destiny much as they've approached everything else stick to your gut, stick to your friends, and let your heart carry you through.

www.shoutoutlouds.com

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MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

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Your most memorable Festival moment or experience?
Probably the first time we played Falls. It was in Tasmania and we were on a side stage in the afternoon and were just happy to be there. Our friend Mason Jennings played before us to about a hundred people but by the time we came on the entire festival crowd was at our stage! There was literally about 50 people at the mainstage. It was mayhem with too many people in a small area. The front barrier got knocked down and the crowd sung every song so loudly we couldn’t hear ourselves. There’s been many amazing festival stories but that was the first and I’ll never forget it.

Favourite Artist you’ve seen at a Music Festival?
Probably Snoop Dogg at a festival we played in Detroit.

What’s your ideal Festival line-up?
TBG, Pantera, Biggy, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Fat Freddys Drop, The Clash, The Specials, Kate Bush, Tenor Saw, Tanuki Dub, The Dead Beat Band, Daft Punk, Led Zepplin, Johnny Cash, Bianca Jade

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Turn up, bring your ticket.