Just what is it about Swedish music? How does it remain so consistently lovely, and more to the point, so damn good? The latest Swede to soothe our non-Scandinavian ears, and probably the word of mouth success of 2007, Emil Svanängen – or to give him his confusingly punctuated pseudonym, Loney, Dear – returns with ‘Saturday Waits’, the second single from the much-lauded ‘Loney, Noir’ album.
‘Saturday Waits’ contains everything that has marked Loney, Dear out for praise, most notably the combination of sunshine pop melodies painted on a gentle summer canvas with a lo fi folk brush. As with many of the songs on ‘Loney, Noir’, it starts off fairly quietly before adding layers and layers of colours, hitting its peak with the Beach Boys harmonies of its chorus. Buried beneath these layers is a poignant tale of isolation that Svanängen brings to life and turn into a joyously uplifting three and a half minutes of glorious indiepop.
There is more joy to be had on the flip side of the single – if the Flaming Lips decided to pack in all ideas of giant concept albums and songs that explode to the very edge of pop reason and recorded an album of 4/4 summer pop songs it would probably sound a bit like ‘I Do What I Can’.
If Belle and Sebastian or the Magic Numbers lived in Sweden, they might just make music as effortlessly cool as this. ‘Saturday Waits’ is yet another song that makes you want to give it all up and move there – sooner or later we might just all do it.
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