Shout Out Louds - Our Ill Wills

Go to any town in the Midwest, find a dinky high school out in the scraps, then look for the kids in black standing on the side of the road “off school property” grumbling and smoking cloves. Take the Shout Out Louds sophomore release, put it into a Cure dust jacket, throw it to the hungry crowd, and no one would be the wiser. Every lyric breathlessly uttered finds itself somewhere between Robert Smith or Morrissey while the jangling guitars meander around simple 4/4 percussion and, at times, a string quartet. Most importantly, it doesn’t sound hokey at all. Somehow, be it the sincerely uttered dark and brooding words or the simple sweet Swede-pop of it all, it simply works. Definitely for Cure/Smith fans.