Late Review: Loney, Dear at the Crocodile

First off, I want to offer forgiveness to Champaign, IL's Headlights for killing a duck. Apparently, one somehow got in the way of their van on the grand ol' touring road, and they spent a little chunk of down time during their set asking if it was suicide or if they (as vegans and generally just nice upstanding folk) should feel guilty. I say the duck was asking for it, and they're off the hook. Secondly, I want to tell the band that I've finally come to terms with the fact that their blend of sunny pop and a little sprinkle of shoegaze made me grin like an idiot for the entirety of their set. The likelihood that I looked like a total goon, smiling from ear to ear, was pretty high. I'm cool with it, because it was obvious that you were actually enjoying the holy hell out of what you were doing on stage.

Smiling at each other, bouncing up and down, clapping their hands and slapping their tamborines, Headlights succeeded in finding the perfect balance of delay-addled indie rock and angelic pop while running through a set of exuberant, joyful tunes that covered the room in a syrupy haze of swooning boy/girl harmonies. It was reminiscent of some of the more epic and memorable moments of Stars and Camera Obscura. Headlights, you had me at "We killed a duck." And you are forgiven.

The last time Swedish bedroom-pop sensation Loney, Dear came through Seattle, it was playing to a packed Moore Theatre, opening up for whistling dervish Andrew Bird. I dare say that Loney, Dear held their own in Bird's nest, thanks in part to some incredible audience participation (a choir of nearly 1500 never hurts a performance) and a venue that sounded as pristine and pure as any I've ever heard. Not trying to bag on the Croc, but I was a little nervous that the less-than-grandiose setting might make the urgency of Loney, Dear's hushed folk fall a bit short. Thankfully, the audience was less interested in conversation and soaking their bones in PBR tall-boys and more focused on singer Emil Svanängen's mannerisms and stories.

On record, Loney, Dear is more of an intimate experience, as everything you hear on the record is Svanängen, recording in his parents basement. Thankfully, Svanängen has assembled an incredibly precise backing band who flesh out his arrangements and never seem like some hack backing band who are merely singing for their supper. As warm and intimate as Loney, Dear sounds on record, and as well as it would translate to a solo acoustic set, full-blown live performances really do suit the group. Watching Svanängen playfully conduct the crowd in group vocal parts, and jokingly try to get some overeager audience members to stop singing during the whisper quiet verses, it felt like secretly observing a grade school music teacher who lives for their work, and even more so the students who make their job possible. The ability to take a room full of people and transform stone-faced casual observers into one giant smiling glee club is a special one, and when Svanängen stepped in front of the microphone to broadcast a bit of a song sans PA, the 200 or so people inside the normally rambunctious Croc quieted down to a whisper and hung on every note. It was the kind of moment that puts a shiver down the spine and is completely characteristic of that band's magic.

There is no light show, no smoothly rehearsed banter, no pyrotechnics needed to emphasize moments such as this. It was unbridled joy, mixed with a refreshing sense of wide-eyed wonder toward the entire world, and when Emil Svanängen raised his voice, the simple pleasure of a human being who has decided to spend his life making music and sharing it with the world becomes a rapturous, contagious feeling of getting something off of your chest without screaming about it. Beautiful catharsis, thy name is Loney, Dear.