The intriguingly spelt and irritatingly punctuated Loney, Dear has been one of the best musical finds of this year. You could have found him before, but you would have had to look hard. Loney, Dear is the alter ego of the Swedish singer-songwriter and home-recording genius Emil Svanangen, who self-released his first album, The Year of River Fontana, in 2003; but unless you were his friend, or a friend of a friend, you were unlikely to join his tightly formed fan base back then.

The American label Sub Pop signed him after he appeared at last year’s SXSW festival, in Austin, Texas, and rereleased his fourth album, Loney, Noir. When it came out over here, on Regal this April, it met with universal critical acclaim. Since then, Svanangen, who spent much of the previous four years sitting with his headphones on in tiny apartments, has found the consequences of his sudden wider exposure – putting a proper band together, touring, promotional duties – a bit of a culture shock. “Too much is happening now,” he says. “More than I want, because I’m really about recording and making music. I love to sit on my own . . . and add things, and subtract things.” Presumably, it’s this sort of happily reclusive existence that the band name is supposed to evoke? “Oh, exactly.”

Svanangen has been obsessed with music for a long time. At five, he was learning piano; by the age of eight, he had added clarinet. But what he really wanted was a synthesizer. “I froze when I first saw a synthesizer on TV. I can still appreciate how modern it seemed in those days.” In his mid-teens, however, Svanangen switched allegiance from high-tech modernity to more traditional fare. He started playing acoustic guitar and “not very hip Christian folk music”. At 18, he zigzagged again and formed a jazz piano trio. “I know it sounds like I kept changing direction, but when I look back on it, it seems like a straight line to me – every piece of music I make, I can trace back to one of these different phases.”

Svanangen might be able to, but you almost certainly won’t be. You will hear sweet West Coast pop melodies, gentle alt-folk arrangements and sudden, Arcade Fire-style rushes of musical energy; and you’ll hear Svanangen’s thin, high voice, clear and distinct, over gorgeously layered musical backings that genuinely invite comparison with the work of Brian Wilson. The point at which songwriting and arranging and recording blur into one is the point at which Svanangen comes into his own. “It took me a long time to get into multi-track recording,” he says, “but when I finally did, it was a big turning point in my life.”

Svanangen finally acquired the means to multi-track in 2001, when the Swedish government decided to sell computers at a discount. A friend supplied some cheap eastern European music software. “I got used to working really fast, because I never knew if the computer was going to start up again the next day,” Svanangen remembers. He was finally in his element, constructing intricate musical structures, the kind where you can’t quite work out what instrument is playing what part, where many apparently simple elements suddenly combine into something truly special. “I like the magical things that happen in music,” he says, “the things you can’t explain.”

Svanangen sold his own CDs via his website, and found that he could make a living from his music thanks to a small but enthusiastic fan base. “I didn’t do much promotion. It spread by word of mouth. People would tell me what they thought of the songs, and I used their feedback to develop. I changed things around if people didn’t like them, or if there was a song I didn’t hear anything back about at all, I’d drop it completely.”

It’s hard to believe Svanangen would get anything but positive feedback for the songs on Loney, Noir: songs such as the floating Sinister in a State of Hope, with its delicate guitar lines and hopeful vocals, or the urgent I Am John, about someone who is “never gonna let you down”, but always does. Ironically, his new-found fame means Svanangen is spending more time than ever burning his self-made CDs, folding covers and putting them in the post, as increasing numbers of people fall in love with Loney, Noir and decide to explore his earlier work. He is staying humble. “I still really appreciate sitting at home, folding CD covers,” he says. Then he has a rethink. “Actually, maybe after a couple more months, that will be enough.”

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