With a new record label to call home (Merge Records, taking the place of Capitol) and a successful European trek under their belts, Shout Out Louds are anxious to bring “Our Ill Wills” to the States. Frontman Adam Olenius spoke about the band’s long road to a follow-up album, the surprisingly long shadow of the Cure and their partnership with producer Bjorn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John.
How many of the new songs were road-tested during all that time you were touring?
There was actually one song that we played a few times and we thought it was going to be a great song for the record—but we didn’t end up putting it on. I don’t know if we got tired of it, but it just sounded too much like the old stuff. Maybe we’ll use it in the future, but it didn’t feel right—it was a really weird moment. The first single, “Tonight I Have To Leave It,” we played at a few festivals last year.
That song sounds like an obvious pick for the lead track and the first single. Was it indeed obvious to the band?
It was. That was a song that we wrote quite early. There’s a different beat and different rhythm to the songs on this record. We really wanted to do an upbeat song as the first single. We wanted it to sound like the record was exploding. [Laughs] There were a few other songs that we talked about, but “Tonight I Have To Leave It” was kind of a darling.
What sort of a producer is Bjorn?
He’s like a grumpy old dad. [Laughs] No, he’s a really good arranger. He’s really good at stripping things down. The production is more detailed on this one, and we really wanted to hear the maracas or the piano loops. Bjorn cleaned up the songs and arrangements a little bit. He was kind of like a sixth member, and he was really passionate and involved about everything. We need someone! If we were producing it ourselves, we would fight a lot.
How did your working relationship begin?
We met him at a festival. He was really drunk and he came up to me and yelled at me. He hated the production on our first EP. He said, “I should produce it!” Then I said, “If you do it for free, you can do it.” We did an EP with him, and then Stockholm is still a small city, so we were at the same clubs and had a lot of common friends.
You guys elicit a lot of comparisons to the Cure. Do you think that parallel is overblown or pretty accurate?
It’s weird when you’re in the studio for six months and you don’t even think about the Cure. [Laughs] There’s one song on the record called “Normandie” and the intro really sounds like “Close to Me,” and that’s something we did just for fun, just to flirt with the Cure. My voice is similar to Robert Smith’s and there’s nothing I can really do except get an operation. When we started to play, I wanted to sound like Neil Young, and I was listening to a lot of Dinosaur Jr. So J Mascis and Neil Young—I guess Robert Smith is in between.
