Loney, Dear John, Loney
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009Sweden’s Loney, Dear is the project of multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter [ctrl-c+ctrl-v for the name now] Emil Svanängen. Debut was out in 2003 and I got to know the music with Lonely, Noir 2007 and I was lucky to saw a gig at Pukkelpop. The new record, Dear John is awesome. Released the album at the end of January, Loney, Dear now tours with Andrew Bird (who plays violin on I Got Lost btw). The sound is like if Thom York was born in the brutal cold of Sweden and was destined to write and record indie pop songs in the solitude of his apartment. We know that Sweden is a great place for extraordinary pop music and Loney, Dear is proof. Haunting vocals, ghastly synths, depressive-melancholic lyrics and hell of a lot of instruments combined give birth to the music which seems to avoid labels. Even atmospheric labels. Everything’s on the move here, we shift from sadness to half-smiles, from symphonic grandeour to pop playfulness. The most attractive route to the core of the album lies somewhere here: you could picture each song as a slideshow of photos (polaroids if that’s your hipster taste) and the photos capture some small emotional essence from relationships with yourself, with others, personal redemptions and tragedies and the like. The album is very vivid and full of life. Not like you know soccer worldcup themes but more like full of analogies for example between winter outside and summer in your heart or the other way around.
Loney, Dear - Summers [zshare] // [ysi]
one of the coolest Parisian labels realized the post-banger era and the importance of smooth synths. 
visionary songwriter, Fredrik (both of them have their own stuff). The description proves to be quite accurate when we check their album vs. The Snow which their label was kind enough to send us. Minimalistic pop melodies with a very strange atmosphere. Diverse and intense, the record is a melancholic trip through a collection of moods which result sometimes in an alternative dancey disco, pretended happiness and sometimes in post-rockish artsy sound. Childish and noisy, the album is the soundtrack of weird summer days when, at the same time, it feels and doesn’t feel like summer. A cold breeze, rain and other weird things can occupy the ruling place of hot sunwaves.
the atmosphere is like Neverending Story. Or maybe the obvious association could be La Boum-esque dancing with a headphone alone on a crowded dancefloor with 80s discoballs. But these songs are truly perfect for days full of ugly hangovers when you just wish to sit on a glacier above everything with cold winds clearing your aching head. Superman sitting on the icy top of the world, sadly holding and staring at some cryptonite in his hands.
