Loney, Dear
Loney, Noir

THE REVIEW

Orphaned Grandaddy fans, where are you? You can put away the tear-soaked tissues, here's a name that can soothe your wounds!

Loney, Dear is a Swedish band, and this is their new album, just released by none other than Sub Pop: once an inexorable forge of incandescent lava in Seattle, now a careful cultivator of the most sophisticated indie pop gems. Sweden, after all, is offering great satisfaction to the fanatics of such offerings: Jens Lekman's success is evident to all, but here we swim in decidedly deeper waters.

How do the hairy Californian grandpas come into play? A couple of things: first, Emil Svanagen's voice is almost always hung on a falsetto that can't help but evoke Jason Lytle's timbre and, by transitive property, Neil Young's as well. And the Buffalo Springfield of "Expecting to fly" are a fundamental influence for Loney, Dear too: fragments of celestial folk and pieces of lysergic pop abound everywhere. Masterful Californian iridescence colors the icy Scandinavian landscapes with fiery sunsets, as in the soothing "The meter marks ok," enlivened by tasty vintage keyboards, or the muted "Sinister in the state of hope."
Compared to the band of "The Sophtware Slump," the electro-fi bric-a-brac is less pronounced and the indie-inspired guitar floor is entirely absent, yet the spectrum of influences of the Swedish group embraces another celebrated name from the '90s: early Belle and Sebastian, for that touch capable of combining a certain student intellectualism with a twee compositional freshness rich in imagery, metaphors, and magnetism.

Pieces on the level of "I am John" and "Saturday waits" haven't come from Stuart Murdoch's pen in ages. Other little gems include the almost Pet Sounds-like lament of "Carrying a stone," or the soft spell of "I could say": an ironic and intelligent confectionery, nimble enough to elude the traps of so much boring indie-pop, as illustrated by the very sweet "I am the odd one."
In conclusion: an album that has no pretensions of changing the course of today's music, whose author will never end up on the cover of NME or Rumore, but which has much more depth and less affectation than many side projects of bored celebrities like Damon Albarn or self-proclaimed new-rockers fed to us with a frequency between fake persuasion and hidden advertising.

A perfect album for this unusual February, made of warm spring candies, and one that can accompany you with enviable lightness until summer.