Loney Dear :: "Loney Blues"

Loney Dear mastermind Emil Svanagen seems to get a lot of mileage out of his project's name almost sounding like the word "lonely". This was particularly problematic in 2006 when the band's first LP broke into the hearts and minds of listeners with an ear for well-crafted bedroom pop, occasionally mistaking his name in confluence with his sound as "Lonely Dear". On latest promotional single, "Loney Blues", Svanagen leaves us with a self-referential signifier that does little more or less than its central lyric, "It gets to your head, it gets to your heart." In short, Loney Dear is back where he is most comfortable: making lonely, orchestral creations, this favoring slow-drive pop. The miracle isn't that he recovers from these lowest of lows, but rather that he never recovers from them. The ability to get and stay sad makes his work not of catharsis but of a more elemental depression. This darkness is not the moment before the clouds clear and the rain stops. This, in some sense, is the most terrible of fictions, the real opiate of modern life. It is, perhaps, just darkness, and darkness is enough.

Listen :: Loney Dear - "Loney Blues"