Shimmering, gliding, haunting and tantalising, Celestial hover in the indie pop shadows waiting for their next victim, for the next unwilling, unwitting innocent to idle by before being seduced by the sweet, sweet slices of effortless beauty that slide through the darkness and sink deep into your heart without a sound. Without you realising that they have you, held down, absorbed and taken, you can’t resist and if you wanted to it would be futile. Celestial swish and sway, they swoon and sashay, impossible to nail them down and stare them right in the eyes you simply just submit, and it’s a fate that I would wish on you all.

Saving My Presence is a reverb laden indie pop stomp, laced with crashing cymbals and subversive layers of overdriven guitars hidden deep down in the mix, it has echoes of My Bloody Valentine and their heart wrenching best and of the Jesus and Mary Chain when they discovered that songs could be tuneful as well as noisy. It’s very C-86-ish and would sit well in a record collection built around the early days of Creation and Sarah Records, Bobby Wratten would kill for this.

In A Maze and Dream On are much more than filler, the former explodes in a six minute lo-fi collision of distort and chime and leaves you exhausted, whilst the latter is pure N.P.L. dancefloor jangle, chorus and melody exude a compassion and allure that might even get me flashing my corduroy flares around the Winchester Club, it’s irresistible and compelling and deserves to be on every indie kids retro walkman.

The Boy Who Never Says Goodbye lurks somewhere between the Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen, desolate and desperate the hero yearns for simplicity, which is reflected perfectly in the soundtrack and echoed so naturally in the female vocals that accompany. The closing track Black Letter is again more melancholic in nature than Dream On but is in itself spectacular. The breathy vocals and incisive acoustic guitars shroud the whole song in a warm embrace and you just know, that tomorrow, everything’s going to be alright.

This E.P. was recorded at Orebro University during a three (late) night recording session in the spring of 2005, the songs had never been rehearsed, Andreas had written them, and wanted Christoffer to drum on them, Andreas played and Christoffer improvised, and through the dark, cold, long Scandinavian night they produced an epic work of beauty, sometime it just happens like that.

The E.P. is released on the small Swedish label Music is My Girlfriend (here), next week - it will be a limited run of 100 and include free badge and some other free merchandise; it’s also available for free download (including artwork) from here. I think that you should click.

Johnny Mac

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