live wongie: tunng / loney, dear @ union hall, brooklyn

it's rare that i go out to park slope in brooklyn. being one of those manhattanites that make a big deal when i go out to williamsburg (that would be one stop out of the island), imagine what 5-6 stops does for my sanity. of course in the real world, loads of cool people live in the slope and because of that, a few new music venues have popped up in the process.

union hall is one of them. a bar/lounge designed like a large library room (with bocce thrown in at the back), the music venue downstairs was intimate and cozily decorated. it was also nice being around a group of music lovers who respected each others floorspace and wasn't under the age of 25 (ok, there was this small lame group of girls who talked loudly about how they did their masters at yale. they were later shushed by the people around them. i smiled.)

anyway, i walked midway into tunng's set that evening. having not been a big fan of their album mothers daughters and other songs, i really didn't make the effort to catch their whole gig.

bad move on my part, turns out tunng shine when performing live. with roots in acoustic folk music, the rest of the band work around the mellow tunes with electronic soundclashes and dynamic beats. it's as if two bands were playing at the same time and somehow managed to find a common ground. the end result is something pretty impressive and unfortunately not reflected as well on their album.

if you ever get the chance to see this surprising revelation, you should definitely give them a listen.

here were two songs that stood out live:
tunng - the pioneers
tunng - jenny again

the real reason why i went to union hall was to check out one of my buzz bands of the season loney, dear. after hyping multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanangen for the past month, i really wanted to see if he was as good as i imagined him to be.

putting together a mesmerizing confident performance, loney dear as a band is extremely polished and surprisingly loud. though emil had a tendency to over sing his highnotes (his screech isn't as nice as his soft falsetto), the mix of melancholic lyrics over sweet choral harmonies made me appreciate his music even more.

now that subpop has picked up on this talent stateside, i'm sure loney's future albums will only get more polished and wonderfully personal.

here are some gems by loney, dear
loney, dear - the city, the airport
loney, dear - the city, the airport (david tross remix)
loney, dear - saturday waits

like what you hear, buy the album!

and here's another track that i shared previously by fellow swedes i'm from barcelona featuring loney, dear.
i'm from barcelona feat loney, dear - this boy