Much is made of Emil Svanängen’s lo-fi credentials, and rightly so. Before he was Loney, Dear he was just Emil in his Stockholm bedroom or parent’s basement, and Just Emil In His Bedroom had a multi-track recorder and a thousand and one songs in his head. And these songs slowly made their way onto CDRs which entered thousands of people’s possession through sales made by the boy himself at train stations and the like, apparently, long before first UK indie Something In Construction and then the Regal label came clawing at his door. As inevitable as it might all now seem, knowing what you now know. And it’s important that you know it all first, because this is one of those rare occasions when ramping up your expectations actually does the record a favour.
It genuinely does seem to be the case that he can just turn a tap on the side of his face and have a sweet song froth right out. In fact it really puts in context what bad company he’s found himself in on the same label as Pete Doherty and his Babyshambles, a man who has laughably tried to build a facet of his reputation on his apparent prolificacy. Loney, Dear’s second or fourth album, depending on where you’re counting from, picks up where his formal debut (i.e. it was officially released) ‘Sologne’ left off. Tie one end of a length of elastic to Kings Of Convenience and the other to Sufjan Stevens, pull really hard, watch it rebound endlessly with joy (that’s you, not the piece of elastic). That essentially is it, but being an album full of revelations you should also note that following a formula needn’t mean repetition.
The whole record has a constant, steady pulse – it’s music in good health. It brims with an endearing regularity and the no-frills frills of Belle & Sebastian or Peter Bjorn & John. The songs are bewitching, thanks in part to the fairytale woodwind shuffling in and out of view in ‘I Could Stay’ and ‘Hard Days 1,2,3,4’, but especially due to the way each track earns your trust before whisking you off blindfolded on a new mystery tour. See especially the ever-expanding snowball baby-anthem ‘I Am John’, gaining pace with each increasingly frantic passing moment (and when we say frantic we mean like Simon & Garfunkel on fast-forward) and the Grandaddy-esque 3-minute weightless spinning epic ‘Carrying A Stone’. We say his lo-fi credentials are important, and they are, but take away his 4-track and give him the Royal Philharmonic and we’d bet that his genius wouldn’t pale. Looking forward to album eight already.