stream: Loney Dear Signed To Polyvinyl; New Album To Be Released Jan. 2009
Sweden’s Loney Dear has been signed by Polyvinyl Record Co. and will debut on the Champaign, IL-based label with the release of a new album, Dear John, on Jan. 27, 2009.
Hailing from the small city of Jonkoping (home of the world’s largest LAN Party and smelliest event, DreamHack), Sweden, Loney Dear’s primary member Emil Svanängen first began making homemade recordings of delicate, folkish indie pop in the early 2000s. As Loney, Dear (the band has since deleted the comma from its name), Svanängen self-released three homemade CD-Rs and garnered internet buzz as well as the attention of Sub Pop which only released one album; 2007’s Loney Noir. But that’s all in the past. Water under the bridge. Polyvinyl is the new Sub Pop, right? The band will be touring the US again in early 2009, and has a pair of New York shows in December where it will be showcasing songs from Dear John for the first time.
Svanängen promises that Dear John will be an “album in dark shades with a lava-like glow from underneath,” and ‘Airport Surroundings’, the first single, may give some clues to his meaning. Exchanging his usual falsetto for a troubled mumble, Svanängen sounds, indeed, like a worried man talking to himself in an airport. The minor-key electronics surrounding his voice-most of all the thrills and chills of the gothic organ, which sounds borrowed from the Castlevania soundtrack-are sinister and rhythmically intense. Apparently a dark drop of Joy Division has entered Loney Dear’s musical bloodstream.
stream: Loney Dear ‘Airport Surroundings’
from Dear John
