Loney, Dear – Dear John (2009)

Loney, Dear is a pseudonym for the Swedish singer-songwriter Emil Svanängen. He started his career by making endearing minimalistic folk records, but then moved on to using more and more electronic instruments in his albums along with a variety of other interesting instruments. Dear John was released after his probably most acclaimed album Loney, Noir that was released by Sub Pop. Dear John is already quite far away from the folk sounds of the first albums. There are huge orchestrated backing tracks in the songs, electronic drums and strange multi-instrumentalist experiments. On the other hand it gives the album quite a unique sound, on the other hand, I feel like the songwriting has suffered as a consequence of all this sound experimentation. It's not Loney, Dear's best piece of work, but it has some very strong moments.



I saw Loney, Dear live here in London at this tiny music venue Servants' Jazz Quarters in Dalston. I was surprised just how awkward his performance was. I mean, the music was definitely good, but he seemed really nervous otherwise and his English wasn't that great. He even kept making jokes about his Swedish accent. On the other hand, he was really funny because you could see that he didn't take himself too seriously. This gig was only last year after his most electronic album, but I was happy that he also played some old favourites at the gig.

The album starts with a hectic electronic drum beat and intensive melody in Airport Surroundings. The song sounds like an escape scene in a movie. I love how the song keeps growing from start to finish. Everything Turns You is even darker and more hectic by its sounds. I'm kind of reminded of TV On the Radio when I listen to these sounds, although the vocals are something else completely. Svanängen's voice is delicate and endearing. I Was Only Going Out sounds a bit more like Loney, Dear's old albums. Possibly mainly because it's played on an acoustic guitar. There are some great whistling parts in the song. Harsh Words continues the folkier approach and the vocals are just as beautiful and endearing as we have come to expect from Loney, Dear. Under a Silent Sea actually sounds quite a lot like the song title suggests. The vocals are doubled with a vocoder and the echoey synth sounds create an underwater feel. The song grows into almost full-on techno beats towards the end. I Got Lost has some beautiful string instruments, but the song itself is difficult to find under the blinking and whistling instrumentation. Summers has a bit of a tacky pounding synth sound in the background, but the vocal parts are just beautiful. Distant is a very quiet song even if it has quite fast electronic drum pounding throughout the song. I like the melancholy of the song. Harm goes back to simplistic folk music where the vocals and a picked guitar are the most important parts of the song. Violent, quite absurdly considering the name, sounds like a very uplifting song with slightly cheesy adventure movie style instrumentation. The album ends with the title-track Dear John, which is basically a lullaby. A good way to end the album.

I haven't even thought about Loney, Dear music videos before, and I think I haven't seen any before now. The video for I'm Only Going Out has some blurry city lights that keep flickering in the beginning. Later we see a woman in what looks like a night gown wander the streets of New York with those lights we saw earlier flickering through her shirt. When the song grows bigger, the woman runs into the forest and crawls up in her gown and watches the lights flicker.

Loney, Dear is yet another example of great and unique songwriters from Sweden. I don't really know why this country of 10 million inhabitants has become such a masterful country in pop music. Compared to the population, Sweden must be one of the greatest music countries in the world.

Listen to the album on Spotify.