After spending nearly two years straight together in the studio and on the road, the Shout Out Louds decided they needed a little time apart. Once the Swedish band finished touring behind its 2007 album 'Our Ill Wills,' the members scattered, literally, to opposite sides of the globe.

"It's not that we were tired of each other -- we really wanted to make another record," singer Adam Olenius tells Spinner. "It was a precaution so we wouldn't collapse."

Keyboardist Bebben Stenborg spent time with her boyfriend in Los Angeles; guitarist Carl von Arbin, bassist Ted Malmros and drummer Eric Edman retired to Stockholm; and Olenius found himself in Melbourne, Australia, where his girlfriend was living. It was there, in her apartment, where Olenius started writing songs for the Shout Out Louds' third album, 'Work.'

"My girlfriend had the smallest room in a three-bedroom apartment," Olenius says. "I love that city, but the neighborhood we lived in was a really awful corner of Melbourne where all the backpackers and British drunk kids hang out and listen to either really crappy techno or really crappy 'backpacking guy with a guitar' sitting on a beach playing bad pop music."

The thumping techno even bled through to the demos he recorded for his bandmates, though 'Work' is most certainly not a techno record. It's a collection of melancholy pop songs on which the musicians took a simpler approach than on 'Our Will Wills.'

"The whole idea for this record, everyone agreed before we had the break, was to make a more stripped down record, to lose the dramatic sound we had on the second one," Olenius says. "We wanted to be more relaxed in what we do."

'Work' is due Feb. 23 on Merge.