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Swedish singer/songwriter Emil Svanängen – Loney, Dear – gained some semblance of success when Sub-Pop released his album Loney, Noir in 2007. Although not a mainstream success, his influences are wide and obvious – especially on his most recent album Hall Music. Svanängen’s biggest asset is his use of tempo and space, sort of like if James Blake decided to produce a lo-fi Mumford & Sons. Just like Mumford, Svanängen’s passion is palpable – but it’s not as obvious. There’s a subdued nature – a quiet yet powerful tool – as if he’s taking literally Teddy Roosevelt’s advice to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
The album opens with “Name”, an ambling track that explains the album’s name – a vast melody with a nostalgia factor. Like a continuous flow of end-of-relationship sadness, “Loney Blues” is just verse after verse with no chorus, a structural representation of how life lacks direction after a loss. The absence of distance between lyrics matches the punchy bass line that pulls the slack drums on tempo, drawing an instant connection to Band of Horses. The video for the song is just as depressing – if not more – featuring a lone masked skateboarder trying desperately to connect who instead ends up watching Svanängen on a discarded alleyway television.
“Slow down/ there’s nothing after you/ Back down/ there’s nothing after you/ Calm down/ there’s nothing after you” are the repeated lyrics on the album’s next track “Calm Down” – as if our hearts weren’t already heavy enough. It’s a slow, quiet attack on the core with a tasteful vibraphone solo over driving drums, a distant voice, to end the track.
“Maria, is that you” displays Svanängen’s Andrew Bird-esque attack on jazz. The keyboard arpeggiation is awkward, then Svanängen’s haunting vocals give the piano direction. Amidst bounding cymbal crashes, a light, female harmony grows in intensity with the (seemingly) arbitrarily placed saxophone and flute lines. Svanängen takes a chance and it pays off handsomely: his heavily-reverbed voice holds the manufactured mess together. In fact, he relies on his ethereal voice as the glue for the tempo-changing rhythm section in most of his songs – creating an ebb and flow effect. Just when the melody line seems lost, gone out to sea, Svanängen quickly reels it back, just in time for the downbeat.
Would I call Svanängen’s fifth studio album a success? Yes, but not a wild one. Even though the ideas stay (somewhat) central, the music certainly doesn’t. The genuine emotion in his voice does help him a little in this area – attempting to convey stark mood changes – but the structure doesn’t translate. It’s too much. There’s a disconnect from song to song, making the album sound like singles thrown together rather than a cohesive project. Maybe the long-lost lover theme is cliché, but Svanängen’s timid-yet-impassioned persona is endearing, letting the listener succumb to the guilty pleasure of liking just one more song – one more album – about love.
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