AllMovie

With the rise of digital downloading and on-line music shops, brick and mortar record stores are having trouble staying open in many parts of the world, and in the city of Stockton-on-Tees in North East England, if you're looking to buy a CD or LP at a retail shop, you have only one option: Sound It Out Records, an independent store run by Tom Butchart, who caters to obsessive music fans and vinyl junkies who just aren't satisfied with MP3s. Filmmaker Jeanie Finlay offers an affectionate portrait of Butchart and his regular customers in the documentary Sound It Out, examining a few days in the life of the store and the people who shop there, ranging from heavy metal fanatics and soul obsessives to a devoted Status Quo fan living with cerebral palsy and a number of arrested adolescents who are happier indulging their passion for music than dealing with marriage or career advancement. Sound It Out received its world premiere at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it was billed as the official film of Record Store Day, an annual event designed to promote awareness of independent record shops.