Interview: Shout Out Louds
The Shout Out Louds have just released their second album, "Our ill wills". We met up with guitarist Carl, drummer Eric and keyboard player Bebban to talk about the album, touring and love...
- Stefan Hartmann
The new album is quite different from the first one. How would you describe that change?
Carl: It's been a while since we've recorded the first one. So we've grown and developed. I guess our producer Björn (Yttling, of Peter Bjorn and John) has a big part in it as well. I really like the way he records drums. He takes away things more than adding things. And we picked a lot of guitars for instance and added more rhythmic instruments. Those are all big parts why we sound different.
Bebban: We are more experienced musicians now than we were on the first one so we know more about recording and we know more about sounds and layers and just little tricks you can use to make something sound different. We learnt that from our producer. When we recorded the EP with him a long time ago, we just discovered new ways. It would have felt really strange to record something similar to the last one now.
I noticed you took away a lot of the tambourine. It was all over the first album, and now it's all about percussion. It's like a red thread through most of the songs.
Eric: We talked about the drums a lot and how they can really turn a song around. The drums play a big, big role.
Carl: The tambourine is a nice instrument but there's a lot of other nice percussion you can use. Every band uses the tambourine.
Bebban: I still love my tambourine!
Carl: Yeah, I still love the tambourine, too. It's a great instrument! And Björn, he's a great producer to make drum sounds and percussion sounds, and we had help from John (Eriksson, also from Peter Bjorn and John) who helped us play a lot of percussion as well.
Eric: We use percussion more like an instrument than just something to bang on.
Bebban: You can think about drums and percussion as a way to just keep the beat, so that everyone plays it right, but this time we just realised that it is an instrument. The drum kit has such a huge effect. I actually think that drummers should have a lot more credit than they get because it just has such an impact.
Eric: Thank you! I mean, the drums on this album are not that difficult, it's a pretty straight-forward beat, almost like a disco beat. That's the core, and then we have the percussion as the added jewellery.
Bebban: The icing on the cake!
Eric: To emphasize different rhythmic parts. And it's nice to do that with different percussion instead of drums.
The change also seems to be on the lyrical side. It seems when you talk about broadened horizons that everything seems a little more laid back compared to the first one. Your press release described it as a spring feeling kind of record.
Bebban: Yeah, like a new beginning.
Carl: But more like a Swedish spring.
Bebban: Yeah, it has snow in April, but it's still nice.
A lot of it is still quite melancholic although it's very summery. There's always this kind of undertone.
Bebban: When I think of the lyrics right now it almost half and half. The feeling when you have lost something important and then you're just on the verge of gettin excited about what's coming next. For instance, in a relationship or if you move to a different place, there's both this sadness about what you left behind and wondering and remembering, but then sometimes you get a glimpse of "This is really exciting. What's gonna happen and who am I gonna be friends with tomorrow? Where am I going?" That's the theme for the record. And a lot of travel, too, which probably goes hand in hand.
You've been on tour for ages. Doesn't that kind of do your head in? Or is it something you can cope with quite well?
Bebban: We don't remember now. We were on tour for such a long time, and when we were getting towards the end of the touring last summer, we were all kind of sloppy and relieved that this is over. We were really eager to just go back and have a real life.
Carl: It was nice to be back in Stockholm.
Bebban: But kind of soon I started to think: "When are we heading out the next time?" We talked about it quite soon, much sooner than we thought. But now that we're in the middle of it all again, just on the verge of being out there so much again, that's when you remember the scary parts of being on tour. You know, when you get really sick and worn out and dirty - that kind of creeps up on you a little bit once you're going.
Carl: We just know what we have to expect and that has both an up- and downside. You have to think about how you deal with the downsides, cause that's the hard part.
Bebban: Like I said before, you both get a whiff of the fun stuff that is gonna happen, all the fun things about touring you get really excited about, but this time we know what the bad days look like and we fear them – we didn't really last time.
Eric: We know what to expect of touring but it's a new album, we don't know... We didn't play those songs live much yet, a couple of shows. We don't know how it's gonna be to play them live and how the audience will react. It takes a while to figure out how to play live. Even though we can sit and discuss the setlist, we have to play those songs live to see what actually works together, and see what happens with the album in different countries.
Bebban: That's a thing we really can't control.
Carl: We played the other day for the first time with this record and it was a very refreshing feeling compared to playing earlier when you can get into this kind of state of it just being... I hate to say it... it just being a job. And that's the worst feeling about it. It destroys every magic bit, everything about it. So this time, when we played, it felt like we were more collected and it felt more like we reached out. We really want people to feel something. Everything does matter.
Your're going away from EMI. You've got different small labels for different territories. Is that a conscious decision?
Bebban: It wasn't a choice, they kicked us out, you know, because of the merger with Virgin. And we were sad for maybe two or three days and then we realised how much better this would be for us, so as soon as we started hearing from the smaller labels we felt like this is really perfect. We're more suited for a smaller label.
Eric: I'm not badmouthing anybody, but it feels like sometimes they just work with so many different artists and so they have to love everything (or they don't say if they don't love us). You can feel that if you're working with different labels, you can choose the ones you feel the most love from.
Bebban: The Capitol thing was really good for us. It was good to end up there but I think we're better off this way, especially after that merger. We wouldn't have liked that at all.
Carl: It took us out here and left us. Now we have to stand on our own.
That network idea. Somehow I always get the impression that Sweden's music scene is very connected as well. You're being produced by Björn and he ropes in John for percussion etc etc.
Eric: Everyone is more or less connected, at least in Stockholm. It's not that big of a city, you collaborate a lot. Markus (Krunegård) from Laakso sang on this record, his album is produced by Jari (Haapalainen) and Jari's been working with The Concretes who are working with Björn who is working with Moneybrother...
Bebban: It's a close community, I guess.
You're singing a song for the first time, Bebban. How did it feel?
Bebban: It wasn't a plan for me singing, it just ended up on the record because it sounded okay. We did that separately from everything else. We did a strange and unfocused demo in Garageband and it sounded good somehow and we just redid the vocals and it ended up on the record. I've been trying not to think about that because I don't know if people are gonna think "What's this?" because to me it sounds more like an intermission. Like someone comes in and goes "Okay, I'm gonna sing while all the people vote." and then it's back to the programme.
On the album, there's the songs you kind of expect and then you get much mellower. Cause the first record was very in-your-face, very gritty, and now you've become quite subtle.
Carl: It's not like we planned the way we gonna sound like. The only thing we knew really was that once we got "Hard Rain" right, we knew this has gotta be the last song on the record. That was the only thing that I had set in my mind. It was only when we had all the songs together we though "Okay, how are we going to make it balance well as an album?" So some other songs ended up as b-sides because we wanted to make it a really nice balance and I hope we achieved that. It's kind of hard to analyse it.
Bebban: I think as far as the songs are concerned, iit takes a while to feel the punches. The other one was more in your face, more immediate and really direct, but some of these new songs are kind of cheeky in a way, kind of brave. Adam is really dramatic on "Parents livingroom", it's almost like a song from a musical on Broadway. He sings his heart out. The punches are there but it might take a while before you feel them. So it's sometimes more brave to be really, really not afraid to be interpreted as too emotional than to just sing something and just play hard on the guitar.
To me, "Impossible" seems like a centrepiece. Would you agree that is sums up the whole mood of the album?
Bebban: It's hard to decide which song is the most important, but I would say "Impossible" is the bravest song on the album because it's the one that could be interpreted as very disco, almost too disco for the cool kids. That's a two-faced song I think.
So you're not afraid of the cool kids?
Carl: We're afraid of everything...
Bebban: ... and everybody! (laughter)
We talked about loss, but love is everywhere on the record as well, well, lost love. Do you still believe in love?
Carl: Why would we be here if not for love?
Bebban: I think that it's all in the moment. Everything that's a vague and flaky as love is in the moments. There's moments when there is love but I don't think it's there all the time. It's like happiness: People thrive towards the day when they're gonna feel happy but it's never gonna really happen that way. You're never gonna be happy for 24 hours a day for a whole year. It's gonna be bits and pieces, and the more you can collect those, the luckier you are. And I think that's the way it is with love too. I don't believe in eternal love but I believe in momentary love.