I have been living with Dear John the new Lonely Dear album for a little while now. Originally I got drawn in by the opening track Airport Surroundings after Lonely Dear had been lurking on the edge of my aural world for a while. Lonely Dear is in fact Swede Emil Svanangen who does everything apart from the ocassional guest appearance (Mr Andrew Bird appears briefly for instance)Airport Surroundings has that insistent air about it that I couldn't ignore. Somehow there is something undeniably Swedish/Scandinavian about the whole sound, apart from the obvious Scandinavian accented vocals - the stye of the mutlitracked synth work, the rather melancholic flavour on even the most upbeat sounding tracks.
Initially it was the opening few tracks that were most appealing, the most quickly involving, but as time goes by the later tracks slowly give up their pleasures, progressively more whistful, sadder, aching. There is an undeniable sense of loss, a sort of homelessness in an odd way, behind all the songs but despite this I don't find it a 'down' album at all, really rather the reverse.
Live Mr Svanangen is clearly supplemented by a few mates to reproduce the full sound which if the NPR podcast of a recent show is anything to go by (bundled with the fabulous Andrew Bird gig), they manage to do very well. In the
RSS Feed
iTunes Feed
1 comment:
Post a Comment