I don’t want to feel like I don’t have a future

The Shout Out Louds are yet another band from the land of lutefisk, the welfare state, and Abba. But while most of the Swedish bands I talk about are focused primarily on bright and sunny pop music, these folks clearly are a lot more interested in Robert Smith than anything else. It’s all here: the rat-a-tat drums, the sulky yet inspired vocals, and a whole host of guitar lines straight out of Disintegration. Indeed, their newest record Our Ill Wills is easily the best Cure record I’ve heard in years.

It’s the sound of lost days and easy reminiscence, of the reckless energy of youth, of hesitant touches and furtive kisses. Most importantly, it’s the sound of the ill-defined space in between our broken hearts and our truest love.

It opens with one of the finest love songs of the year. With a combination of rollicking percussion, clanging bells, a dancing guitar riff, and soaring strings, “Tonight I Have to Leave It” is sure to elevate your heart-rate. And it demonstrates exactly what is so intriguing about this band: an ode to true love written in terms of rejection. Love is defined by its absence, in shallow relationships and meaningless connections, and in the need for escape.

A second standout track is the deliciously bitter “You Are Dreaming” with its rousing, desperate chorus: “Say what you say, I am listening, I am all ears / But if you still believe I’m thinking of you, you’re dreaming.” Few have written a better song in the “I’m totally over you” genre, and few have ever exposed the contradictions of such songs more intelligently.

But the record’s clear centerpiece is the nearly seven minute long “Impossible” which manages to be both epic in scope and intensely personal.

Here, love is both transcendent and immanent. It can be observed in the smallest of details, in the way the heart leaps to the throat at the sight of her, the smell of her hair, her fingers interlocked with yours, the pit in your stomach as you remember the lost times and wonder where it all went wrong. However, it is also a universal. Your eyes lose focus and suddenly you touch the hundreds, thousands, millions of other torn souls…each one unique, but all of us looking up in supplication, asking for something we cannot even understand, much less put into words.

It’s impossible, we know, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. And so all we can do is listen, and remember, and forget…

Impossible – Shout Out Louds
You Are Dreaming – Shout Out Louds

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