Loney Dear
May 15, 2009
Bottom of the Hill
Better Than: Pretending that you actually like to play beer pong.
It happens. Music that seems young and raw initially sounds like adult contemporary soft rock the more you hear it. Furthermore, you start thinking that it would be nice to actually sit down at a show. There was no sitting at Bottom of the Hill last night--this was a rock venue, people--but the evening was not an edgy one. Gone were the tight black pants, the handkerchiefs, the greasy skin, the stern, slouched postures that usually haunt the room. The crowd seemed a lot more mainstream than the typical Bottom of the Hill demographic, and the headliner, Loney, Dear, seemed the very embodiment of, shall we call it, mature rock.
Swedish singer-songwriter Emil Svanangen, who performs as Loney, Dear, has previously toured as support for such slowcore titans as Low and Andrew Bird. He's a headliner now, having released Dear John on Polyvinyl Records earlier this year. It's an album of checked angst in league with the wintry heartbreak of Mount Eerie and the synthesized rejection balm of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.
