ROTW: Shout Out Louds - Work
SHOUT OUT LOUDS - WORK (Merge Records)
The last time I had heard the Shout Out Louds before this was their 2007 single "Tonight I have To Leave It" which I would play for friends and try to fool them into thinking they were hearing a long lost track from The Cure. Oh, those Swedes. Always trying to interpret American and English pop music and culture through the innocent eyes of those that don't see the walls of social class and stature that we do. It's why a band like Backyard Babies can sound like Social Distortion and Faster Pussycat within the same album. There are no barriers being broken when the barriers don't exist in the first place.
On their third LP, Work, Shout Out Louds focus less on 1980s influences and more on guilty pleasures from the 1970s for inspiration. Perhaps there isn't much cheekiness in hearing traces of Roxy Music in the album's opener "1999", but a little Christopher Cross comes out as well in that and the song following, "Fall Hard". When vocalist Adam Olenius repeats "Who's at the door?" in "Play The Game", his voice could be that of a dozen or so pop one hit wonders from the 1970s. Almost every track is seasoned with sporadic Eno-ish keyboard riffs, which cures the mundane nature of some of the rhythm patterns used.
But truly how Work wins out is when Shout Out Louds emulate the spaciness of artists like 10CC and Gary Wright on "The Candle Burned Out" and "Too Late, Too Slow", the latter which closes the album out. Work may be less thrills, more stripped down than their previous releases, but it definitely has both an edge and curiosity about it that I had not encountered with Shout Out Louds.
Mix Tape Gem: "Too Late, Too Slow" on any indie rock mix paying tribute to 70's commercial soft rock.
Click the above album image to buy the CD from Amazon.
Clicking >>HERE<< will give you a pop-up player where you can hear samples from Work
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Posted by Will Tynor - aka Vil Vodka at 3/14/2010 6:00 AM 
Categories: Record Reviews
Tags: Shout Out Louds
Categories: Record Reviews
Tags: Shout Out Louds
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