All photos by Jonas Isfält
SHOUT OUT LOUDS / OUR ILL WILLS
An escalating drum roll opens Our Ill Wills, the sophomore album from Shout Out Louds. And rightly so.It's been a few years since the release of their first full-length record, the critically acclaimed Howl Howl Gaff Gaff.
But the band's been anything but lazy. These last years have seen their passports fill up with stamps and their photo albums with snap shots from all corners of the world. They've done their own headline tours as well as being the support act of choice for bands such as The Strokes, The Magic Numbers and Kings Of Leon. Being on the road means you got plenty of time. To think. To drink. To reminisce the past. To play computer games. To miss loved ones. To get lost in new towns. To misbehave and to get your priorities in order. It's all there, on Our Ill Wills. Well, maybe not the computer games so much.
The title Our Ill Wills refers to secrets, why we need them and what makes us keep them, explains the band's singer and lyricist, Adam Olenius. "There are so are many secrets and I'm telling this one to you" he announces in Your Parents Livingroom. Yes, he stresses later in Normandie, "Too many secrets, too many nights, I should have called where have I been all night".
Bebban, the band's keyboard player looks for reassurance in Blue Headlights: "We are good people, aren't we?". At that point you can't help but wonder what exactly they've been getting up to these last years.
Whatever their secrets may be, producer and musician Björn Yttling (also known as Bjorn in between Peter and John) is in on them. Björn produced the EP Oh, Sweetheart (2004) which contained songs that ended up on the international version of Howl Howl Gaff Gaff released in 2005. His production seems to carefully underline even their most fleeting thoughts and it's easy to see why the band describe him as the sixth member.
The collective aspect is vital for Shout Out Louds – they rely on and complete each other in the creative process and say they wouldn't want to make music any other way. Listening to the album you can sense that. Both their personalities and instruments interlocking like a team's group hug before a big game. They did let a few outsiders in too though: Swedish singers Lykke Li, Markus Krunegärd and Dan from Absentee both lend their backing vocals here and there.And Björn called in bandmate John Ericsson, who leant his flexible wrist to percussion bits.
It is evident that Shout Out Louds share Björn's passion for drums and rhythms to create moods. Not only does the album start with a thunder. It ends in a hurricane and shows no signs of stagnation along the way. And that's something Adam keeps coming back to. The rush. Pop music needs that rush. Along with youth, infectious melodies and good hair you could say it's the very foundation that pop music rests upon. Well, that and love of course. Lost love. Impossible love. Temporary love. Lack of love. And of course utlimately the need of and the search for love. That's all there is really. Adam says so himself in Tonight I Have To Leave It, the first single from the album: "I just want to be bothered with real love".
And that of course is the conclusion all great pop music has to come to.
/ Lisa Milberg, May 2007.