Infinite Shuffle

As I sit down to write this, I can’t help but think that this will be the worst review I’ve done so far. Not because I hate the band — quite the opposite actually — but because I simply can’t figure out a good way to describe the music.

The Shout Out Louds are kinda like Los Campesinos! but not as wild or as British. In fact, they’re from Stockholm.

They’re sorta like Camera Obscura, but not as dreamy-sounding, and they’re fronted by a guy.

Their vocals might call to mind the Magic Numbers, but they’re not nearly as loaded with harmonies.

Another band that kept popping into my head was The Cure, but I just couldn’t really pinpoint why. After repeated listens, I started to hear it more often, both in the vocals and the instrumentation. But I still thought my ears were playing a trick on me.

Then I read some customer reviews on Amazon, and, apparently, everyone else was hearing the same thing as me. And they kept referencing the same album — The Cure’s The Head on the Door from 1985 — as an obvious influence.

Some other labels one might use to describe the band include indie rock, indie pop, twee pop and shoegazer pop.

However you want to describe the Shout Out Louds, one thing that is certain is that their music is pretty solid. And after recently releasing their third studio album, it’s clear that they’re still improving.

Their debut, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, received the most critical praise thus far. It provided the music world with a peppy, rocking, slightly distorted introduction to the Swedish quintet.

On their 2007 follow-up, Our Ill Wills, the band smoothed out some of the rough edges and continued to develop its sound. I first discovered the Shout Out Louds through this album’s two big singles, “Tonight I Have To Leave It” and “Impossible”, which are still my favorite tracks of theirs.

The group just released its third disc, Work, on Feb. 23, and it is definitely the band’s best work to date. While none of the tracks have stood out yet as being dominant, all of the songs are above-average, and there’s no real filler to be found.

In fact, the same could probably be said for all their albums. There’s really no bad songs anywhere.

You can listen to six of those solid tracks at their MySpace page and a few more at their official website, where you can also download a special Passion Pit remix of one of their new songs.

Here’s one of my aforementioned favorite tracks. You should be able to detect the Cure vibe pretty easily.

Shout Out Louds – Impossible