November 3, 2005
An Indie-Rock Band Whose Hook Is Sincerity By DAVID CARR
ATLANTA, Nov. 2 - When the Shout Out Louds take the stage on Friday night at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan, most of the signifiers of exalted indie-rock status will be present and accounted for. Edgy, crunchy guitars? Check. Hipster fan base? Noted. Angst-ridden lead singer? Of course. Bored, beautiful and blonde keyboard player? Roger that.
But the Shout Out Louds, out of Stockholm and currently touring the United States in support of their first American release, "Howl Howl Gaff Gaff" (Capitol), appear to be a little more and less than the current crush of cool kids. In fact, their songs seem to be written and performed completely without irony - raw, unfiltered emotion jumps out of every chorus. It appears that the Shout Out Louds sing what they mean. They certainly say it.
On Tuesday night here, the band strode to the stage before an expectant crowd at the Loft, a wide-open rock club on West Peachtree Street. They plugged in and threw themselves into "A Track and a Train," from "Howl Howl." But the planned ignition for the evening generated only horrendous, show-stopping feedback that melted the band's big open. It took only a few songs for memories of the false start to fade, but the lead singer, Adam Olenius, would not let his embarrassment go.
"I am sorry for the terrible beginning of this concert," he said abjectly to the crowd.
Maybe it is the Swedish thing. Because English is his second language, Mr. Olenius appears to lack the words or idioms to obscure his thoughts or feelings, in song or in conversation. After the misfire beginning, he and his four friends began to jump up and down on the rest of the album's songs. The sound careered from a dreamy, Moog-driven majesty to a clamoring hootenanny that had the drunks in front dude-nodding and air-guitaring with all their might.
On "Very Loud," Mr. Olenius promised, "Little by little, you're going to hear me cry."
And so the audience did. They cheered for "The Comeback," a romantic rebound song as close as the band has to a hit, and clapped their way through the B-sides. A critical pet - Rolling Stone, Spin and Pitchfork have all given them love since they first started touring here in 2002 - the Shout Out Louds seem poised to enter a rare circle composed of indie fetish outfits like the Strokes, the White Stripes and Franz Ferdinand, bands that have the ability to find audiences beyond people who spend way too much time in record stores.
Offstage, they are remarkably polite, apparently with a good word for everyone and a bit of wonder that they are again on tour in America. The music, led by the thunderous drumming of Eric Edman and leavened by twee stylings on xylophone and keyboards from Bebban Stenborg, eventually transforms them into rockers. Mr. Olenius in particular seems susceptible to musical possession, gradually slipping the straitjacket of his Nordic heritage to emit soulful yelps and big Bono-like vocal reaches. Near the end of the show, he began "Please Please Please" and the bassist Ted Malmros shoved his mike over to join the mayhem, while the guitarist Carl von Arbin spun tight circles in the background. "C'mon, let's go, let's break this heart in two." Leaning beard to beard -"Winter is coming," Mr. Malmros had explained at dinner earlier - they shouted the imperative into each other's ears.
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The two were art school classmates in 2001 and found themselves trading records. Then Mr. Olenius showed Mr. Malmros how to play the bass.
"In a way it was good we didn't know that much at the beginning," Mr. Olenius said after the show. "We were naïve and playful, and that's something I want to keep as long as we can."
The band cannot help trafficking in rock clichés, but they seem to ring a little truer with a Swedish accent. "If we make enough money to go out on tour and pay for the occasional hotel room, I'm happy," Ms. Stenborg said.
As they make their way around the country and sit for interviews, they have to deal with obvious cultural references - the Hives are mentioned and Ikea comes up, as do meatballs and the songs of Abba. None of this has anything to do with the Shouts, they say. They are Swedes, yes, but they have adopted the shoe-gazing, inward-inflected perspective of so many of their musical brethren, with songs that always seem to take place when it's raining, and painted a smile on them.
"I really like pop music," Mr. Olenius said, "but you have to damage it a bit to make it something new."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/arts/music/03shout.html
