Best tunes of 2010: #29 Shout Out Louds “1999”

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Next up for this best of 2010 list is “1999”, a track off Shout Out Louds’ third album, “Work”.

Formed in 2001 in Stockholm, Sweden, Shout Out Louds are a five-piece indie pop band centred around childhood friends Adam Olenius, Ted Malmros, and Carl Von Arbin. They have released four albums to date, the first two to critical and commercial acclaim and the latter two getting a bit of a cold shoulder by the critics. Much of this aversion was due to their eschewing the doom and gloom on 2007’s “Our ill wills” for a return to a more light and sunshiny pop on “Work”. Personally, I’ve been a fan of both sounds and don’t mind at all the lighter fare, especially since I find that Shout Out Louds, like many of their countrymen, do it so well.

These guys will forever remind me of an ex-coworker who introduced me to their music perhaps a year or so before “Work” was released. I haven’t seen him or talked to him in a few years but I think if we ever met in the street, we’d fall into an easy conversation, like no time had passed. We were about the same age, had similar tastes in music, and we even shared given names. He was a super nice guy but I always felt a bit bad for him because he was the administrative assistant in our work section, a job he never really got the hang of and I think it stressed him out quite a bit. Every morning he would come in with an extra-large Tim Horton’s quadruple-quadruple. For those of you reading this from outside of Canada and unfamiliar with our staple coffee shop’s lingo, that was a gigantic coffee with four creams and four sugars in it. Needless to say, he was pretty jittery for the whole day.

But hey, back to our song: “1999.” It’s the opening number on “Work” and gets things rolling with pep and a jump in its step (kind of like an XL quadruple-quadruple might). Wonky piano tinkling underpins a driving drum beat and leads to some dancing chords and some otherworldly guitar effects just off in the distance. And through it all, vocalist Adam Olenius rolls out the spirited lyrics with plenty of backing supports that feel pulled from the golden 50s. Indeed, its all very nostalgic in sound and tone. Interesting, though, that Olenius here is singing wistfully about a time that was only a year removed from 2000.

“I do remember, like a punch in the face. I never felt so alive since 1999.”

It’s a great summer song and could easily be adapted to apply to a sunny and warm spring day also… and it looks like we’re about due for a few of those so turn it up.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.