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Dinner At The Crystal Ballroom on April 22nd

Written by Juice on April 15, 2015

Joining fellow Captured Tracks artist, Dinner will be opening for Mac DeMarco at the Crystal Ballroom on April 22nd. Born in Denmark, Dinner is the alias for Anders Rhedin, who makes dark, glam-pop that is catchy with hints of seedier undertones. In classic pop form, his songs are about going out to bars or going to the beach, but the subtext behind the lyrics are anything but classic pop.

From his Three EPs, 2012-2014 released by Captured Tracks, opener “Going Out” has Rhedin alone, hysterically doing drugs in his room. When he finally does go out, he says, “You are at a bar/ At Synchronicity/ A night at Mr. T’s/ You’re in the Palisades/ You talk to strangers there/ They talk/ But you don’t hear”. Dinner has an uncanny knack for twisting 80’s style synth-pop into moody, vibrant tunes that feel rooted in nostalgia but are unbeholden to his forbearers, making every song uniquely his own.

Based in LA currently, Dinner has divided his time between LA, Copenhagen, and Berlin, and these disparate influences are worn on his sleeve. Elements of Euro-house club bangers can be heard in his songs alongside the classic Californian pastime of wasting time at the beach.

It’s not all catchy, danceable songs on his Three EPs, however. “Dawn Is Here” is an atmospheric, spacious electro-folk song featuring his voice accompanied by a distorted, almost demonic, version of his voice backing him up, “The dawn is here/ Everything is clear” he sings.

His pop is idiosyncratic, eclectic, but still sounds like something you might hear on the radio, provided your favorite radio station operates in some parallel universe where David Lynch is everyone’s favorite director and Nico became more popular than the Velvet Underground. With a powerful, distinctly European baritone, Rhedin gives a weighty shadow to counterbalance his synth-covered, murky songs.