Warsaw Recordings bring us The Ghost of Helags's debut LP, We Came From the Stars. Unfurling a string of singles these past months, the Sweden-born, Berlin-based pairing of Teresa Woischiski and John Alexander Ericson deliver a retro sounding 12-track (47 min, 26 sec) upbeat indie pop album...

I never really managed to get on with We Came From the Stars. While, in places, deliciously retro, I could get past the fact that Teresa Woischiski's vocals sounded a little lacklustre. It almost sounded as though she was bored, and didn't really want to do this.

The opening 'Chemistry' gets things off to a fairly strong start. It's drum machine heaven wrapped up in a dreamy, dry-ice, pop setting. 'Mary' is enjoyable enough, but Woischiski's vocals... well, this is where you'll decide you love them or that they are starting to grate on you.

And then the rest of the album starts to merge into one whole. As track after track passed I was starting to nod off - thanks to the vocals which are actually quite hypnotic.

The songs are actually, when you sit and analyse them, well constructed and methodically produced. This is not a bad album at all... it's just not that noteworthy either.

6

Nick Smithson