Oh, the curse of listening to a "live" band's studio record. Unfortunately, no matter how many blogs gush over Shout Out Out Out Out's onstage barnburners, their profanity-laced harangues, or feel-good clap-your-hands-say-shout-out vibes, the Edmonton sextet feels lukewarm at best on vinyl. I want to believe Not Saying/Just Saying electrifies the dancefloor as much as pop rocks and soda explode the stomach, but too much evidence says otherwise.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that these guys sound like an ensemble of fantasy camp superfans rather than a collection of honed musicians. The upside is they've garnered comparisons (albeit extremely forced ones) to rah-rah groups like the Go! Team or Junior Senior thanks to their unbridled dance-rock enthusiasm, which no doubt helped spawn this self-promoted, self-financed, and self-released debut. However, the band suffers from the same excessive dance fawning Jesse Keeler did with his MSTRKRFT side project, acting like kids in a candy store by pulling out every trope from multiple drummers (they got two plus a drum machine) to multiple bassists (four!) to vocoders galore.
In addition to these gauche tastes, SO4 pack a fistful of in-your-face 'tude that's sadly lost on nearly every track thanks to the phlegmatic, vocoder-laden vocals and stretches of prosaic soundscapes that dick around the periphery of krautrock and deep house, unable to deliver any knockout blow. Opener "Forever Indebted" wastes over three-quarters of its duration on uninspired build-up, and although the outro percolates, it can't justify the preceding four-plus minutes of stagnant Discovery imitation. When they do attempt an all-out assault on truculent rocker "Chicken Soup For the Fuck You", doubled-up bass riffs try to do the talking but stutter, making for a limp-wristed bastardization of DFA79's drum n' bass machisimo.
When these guys fully develop their ideas, they do show a capacity for producing some catchy hooks. The lyrics of "Dude You Feel Electrical" smack of boorishness, but the song's somber chorus bleeds more Robert Smith-style pathos than the rest of album combined. Closer "Do I Stutter?" further reveals a more pensive yet colorful side, meshing the calculating poker-face of krautrock with the glitzy synths of Van Halen's "1984". Changeups like these try to hedge the album's otherwise mindless dance surge and go figure, the smarter the hooks, the more galvanizing the song. Slathering every sound effect in the studio on some of these numbers just doesn't do justice to the band's live intensity, and SO4's debut ultimately struggles from a dearth of both visceral bite and meticulous songwriting.
