Swedish indie rock five-piece touched down in Australia recently, with sell out shows around the nation and rapturous crowd response.

“It depends on what sort of club it is,” explains vocalist and guitarist Adam Olenius of how the band feel of their trio of run-and-gun shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney, “and sometimes people just want to talk, and drink, and laugh, and dance.”

“The crowd was good,” drummer Eric Edman says of the Sydney show, “and they all seemed to be happy singing along.”

Indeed they were happy to sing along to the sounds of Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, an album that turns out to be less cohesive than it actually sounds. Instead, this Swedish group’s debut is an odds ‘n sods collection of bits and pieces culled together over various sessions and EP releases.

“Well,” explains Adam, “it’s not really a compilation because we recorded an EP after the release [of the album] in Sweden and we really, really liked those songs. Then we had the opportunity to release it internationally we wanted to give it…”

He pauses, waiting for the right words to come to him. “I wouldn’t say we wanted an updated sound but we knew that we worked on this album for a long time and we just wanted to give people a better idea as to how it works. The problem is when you play the same songs and you tour the same album for a long time you feel like you’re stuck in the one place and it creates this feeling of frustration, so we did it for our own sake actually because we liked those songs.”

The album originally came out in Sweden nearly 3 years ago, so you wonder whether the band find it hard to listen back to knowing it’s from different eras. Keyboardist, and sole girl of the group, the stunningly pretty Bebban Stenbourg assures that as most of the songs are on the Swedish version of the album anyway, it’s not a big deal. “It’s just got a few differences, and they’re mostly songs that we liked more anyway,” she says of the new additions that make up the international version of Howl Howl Gaff Gaff.

In Sweden, the band release their material through Bud Fox Recordings, which was started up by a friend of theirs. Drummer Eric Edman explains that after touring Sweden and Scandinavia a number of times, with intermittent journeys to test the waters in London and New York, the band started making the right sort of connections. “We met a lot of people and did a lot of shows in pubs and clubs. Especially in New York we got a lot of great support from venues and bookers, and people who owned booking agencies, and we really wanted to do a lot of shows so we got a lot of support without releasing anything.”

“We got a lot of what you would called ‘buzz’,” continues Adam. “We did a show in L.A. and then labels like Capitol came to the show. It was quite a big step for us to go from being on this small label and then being on a major label.”

“It was a big step,” Bessan agrees, but one that the band clearly feels have most certainly benefited from.

“It’s been working out really smoothly because we’ve been able to still do everything ourselves – from videos to artwork – so it feels like we’re doing it,” Adam says of the control the group have over the direction of the group. “We’re still working with our friend from the label.”

“It’s very important for us to keep working with people that we know and like, even though we’re signed to a major label,” continues bassist Ted Malmos. “And we said that to them and they’ve been very supportive of letting us do our own videos. We’ve been doing that since we started and we always wanted to work the same way.”

Now it’s time for the band to finally start thinking about making their sophomore release, with Adam confirming that demos have begun to be assembled for the recording of the album, with Eric confirming that the band intend to return home to do it. “It’s going to be in Stockholm,” he confirms, “but we don’t know when or exactly where. We’ve been looking at different studios and seeing how it feels. It depends when we choose the songs – some songs need a bigger studio and some songs we could do at home. We haven’t decided how to shape them yet.”

The sound of Howl Howl Gaff Gaff is quite organic without much studio trickery to it, with Eric explaining that most of the songs were recorded live, with the band wanting to translate their live sound to recording. “We wanted to have that faithful, organic sound to it. [The next album] is not going to be that different, but maybe because we’re been touring so much we’ve had a lot of time to think about the new material so we can work on it a bit more and combine different instruments and maybe experiment a little bit more without messing with it too much – it’s just a strong sound, with classic songwriting. It’s just pop music.”

Given that the band have fairly much been on the road non-stop for the last three years, you could reasonably expect that the writing process has been somewhat stilted by the constant state of flux that is travelling the world, playing to adoring audiences. But Adam assures that couldn’t be further from the truth. “We write all the time. When we’re talking about how we want the sound of it to be, we’re thinking about it all the time.”

“We had songs on the first album that we skipped or didn’t make,” explains Ted. “We have a lot of songs like that which are just sitting back.”

“Songwriting is just in you all the time,” continues Adam. “It depends on what mood you’re in, as to how the songs sound.”

Now it’s time for the band to return home to Sweden – they’re expecting red carpets, for traffic to stop, for ticket tape parades, the whole kit and caboodle. After all, it’s been 2 years since they played a show in their home town. In Australia there’d be a typical tall poppy syndrome of wanting to cut the successful quintet down, but Bessan deadpans that that’s not exactly what they have in mind for their return. “No, we’ll expect to be welcomed as returning heroes.”

Shout Out Louds’ Howl Howl Gaff Gaff is out now, with the follow-up tentatively planned for release in late 2006 or early 2007 depending on how recording progresses.