Labels: Thrill Jockey
Review by: Sean Haughton
Music documentaries can be boring fare. The question is asked: is it possible to focus on one band and not have it be a purely self-congratulatory exercise? Certainly some manage to pull off this task, and the more DIY the band the more self-aware they usually are of the backslapping nature of the format. “If We Shout Loud Enough’ instead focuses not only on a band but the city surrounding it. For the uninitiated, Double Dagger were an aesthetic-focused bass-only punk band meshing a weird cross of post-punk and hardcore that always felt painfully uncool in the best way possible.
The band’s general vibe was wry and that theme runs throughout the film. The narration is done with a nod and a wink (freely admitting the band being terrible in early years) and the interviews aren’t fawning. The selection of people interviewed is kept tight to avoid it devolving into some standard talking-head nightmare.
Much of the film is centered around the creation and flourishing of Charm City Arts Space, an all-ages punk venue on the edges of the center of Baltimore. Members of Double Dagger spend much of the film explaining the necessity for these sorts of spaces for art communities to grow and for bands to have sufficient time to expand.
The visual element is especially striking, which is unsurprising given Double Dagger’s connection to design (members run award-winning design studio Post Typography, early songs dealt with CMYK and art school) and Gabe Deloach previously having directed the striking film “The Harvest’. Most importantly, the unusual and unique nature of the band makes it more interesting to hear about, the live footage captures a mix of pretty wild-looking shows perfectly and the goofy mid-drive footage is kept to a minimum that balances well.
It becomes clear early in the movie that the central point of the film is the city of Baltimore. While the camera eye is mostly focused on Double Dagger, the story is on how the support of a city’s scene made something happen and how those people gave back to that city. It could be about any band from Baltimore at that point in time. Much of the film works around the collapse and rebuilding of a scene and the creation of new venues and new bands. How DIY can (and should) work told from the perspective of one of the more unusual punk bands to appear in recent times. At the end of the final show the band play, singer Nolen Strals doesn’t entertain any idea of an encore and just says “go home, start your own band”. “If We Shout Loud Enough’ feels like the kind of music documentary that could inspire someone to do that.