ADAM OLENIUS of Swedish indie pop group SHOUT OUT LOUDS talks to ALASDAIR DUNCAN about the band’s stripped-back approach to their third album.

Shout Out Louds’ third album, Work, was born from the group’s realisation that making music was what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives. “It took us two records to get there,” singer Adam Olenius tells me. “At the beginning, we were scared of music as a full time thing, but over time, we found that we could do it and make it work for our future. There’s something really fascinating about the idea of spending a lot of time on a piece of work,” he continues, “about shutting out the rest of the world just to focus on a big project, so I also like how the title relates to that.”

The band’s second album, Our Ill Wills, was produced by Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John, and with its many bells and whistles, showcased Shout Out Louds as a studio entity. The third time around, the band were determined to strip the sound back to their core guitar, piano, bass and drums line-up. “We realised we wanted to get rid of all the strings and the ornamentation and all the other things we’d added to our sound and just be a band again,” Olenius explains. 

Producer Phil Ek – who has worked with the likes of The Shins, Les Savvy Fav and Fleet Foxes – assisted the band in this undertaking. “He’s very focussed on the idea of a band performing, rather than on adding various studio tricks later in the process,” Olenius says. “He’s really interested in getting the perfect take and the perfect energy in the songs. There are some overdubs on there, of course – things like extra piano and percussion parts, all that glitter that you have to add – but he didn’t add too much.”

Since their earliest days, Shout Out Louds have performed their songs in English rather than their native Swedish. More than anything, this was for practicality’s sake – “we knew when we started the band, our dreams and goals were bigger than the Swedish borders,” Olenius explains. “We love to travel and we love to play, and we wanted to do that as much as possible around the world.” Be that as it may, I’m curious to know if Swedish bands who choose to sing in English experience any backlash at home.

“I understand that this is a problem in other countries,” Olenius says, “but radio stations in Sweden will play songs in both languages. It hasn’t always been this way,” he continues, “but these days, I find that when I’m writing lyrics for the band, I always start in English. There are bands who sing in Swedish who are very important to me, because they write lyrics that just hit me straight away, dealing with very Swedish ideas and things that have happened in our country’s history. The only time I regret not singing in Swedish is when I come up against the fact that, singing in English, we just can’t connect with Swedish crowds in that very immediate way.”

SHOUT OUT LOUDS’ new album, WORK, is out now on Dew Process. Go to www.myspace.com/shoutoutlouds for more.

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