1. Tonight I Have To Leave It
2. Parents Livingroom
3. You Are Dreaming
4. Suit Yourself
5. Blue Headlights
6. Impossible
7. Normandie
8. South America
9. Ill Wills
10. Time Left For Love
11. Meat Is Murder
12. Hard Rain
It's three years since Shout Out Louds' debut album Howl Howl Gaff Gaff was one of the best records of 2005, leaving the Swedish indie pop quintet rather a lot to live up to. Luckily, as Our Ill Wills' preceding single Tonight I Have To Leave It has hinted, they're more than up to the task.
There's nothing here that will alienate the fans they gathered first time round, and with quirky little numbers like the sweetly twee Blue Headlights to off-set Tonight's bluster, there's enough of a new direction to ensure they're moving forward. In fact, they seem to be developing at just the right pace as they skip down a path that's previously had its way makers laid by the likes of The Cardigans
.
There's just the right dash of familiarity - Impossible and Time Left For Love could have been out-takes from the debut - to form a perfect bridge between the new and old, properly rationed to ensure that they can't be accused of treading water. Such tracks remind you why you thought they were so good the first time round, while on Normandie they're practising riffs in the best tradition of The Cure and Johnny Marr.
It's hard to put a finger on exactly what makes Shout Out Louds rise above the crowd, but the way they mix chamber strings with traditional pop completely seamlessly has a lot to do with it, using violin/cello/violas and guitars almost interchangeably, never straying too far into pretention nor punk, swimming along on beautiful harmonies that can take on a Latin flavour when needed (for South America), recreate ocean waves on Ill Wills or drag you onto the dancefloor as quickly as Boys Don't Cry.
Time Left For Love's poetic lyrics suggest they've been spending a little bit too much time recently listening to Morrissey (as if such a thing were possible!) which means that it comes as something of a surprise when Meat Is Murder, the album's eleventh track, turns out not to be a Smiths cover at all, but a completely unrelated song that shares a title and nothing else - although with lines like "cos everything sounds miserable tonight", it could have been a good attempt at guessing the lyrics of the Moz version by someone who doesn't know what they actually are.
To finish this off, they return to multi-layered strings, dancefloor BPMs and pop catchiness of the kind that built their live reputation in the first place and will nurture it until the next time round. Shout Out Louds are back, in style.
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