Regina Soita Mulle

It’s not often that the first 20 seconds of an album-opening song will give a completely accurate prediction of the album that’s about to unfold. It’s even more rare still that such an occurrence is actually a good thing. Through the opening arpeggios and the entrance of vocals, the only thing you can hear is a triumphant eruption of melodic dream pop.

It’s easy to be overtly effusive about this sort of stuff, whether or not it’s fully justified. Soita Mulle isn’t particularly deep on first listen — sure, you have some ethereal vocals, a rhythmic drive that cuts through the track, and there’s an entrancing sense of melody that ties everything together, but those things aren’t quite enough. Sure, it’s essential that everything clicks and that the individual parts are effective — and there’s hardly a foot set wrong here if we’re to discuss the mix and production.

Throw in some general cohesiveness as an album and this gets closer to being worthy of that effusiveness. There’s even a good sense of variety to Soita Mulle that rescues it from the potential doldrums of dream pop (they exist, though I’d clearly be more inclined to believe myself that they are only a myth.) When it comes together, this is a generally cohesive, largely effective body of work. The melodies are infectious, even when seen as a whole across the album, and the Finnish vocals are brilliantly integrated into the album’s meandering path.

But like much dream pop hitting ears, Regina haven’t done anything particularly new. There’s a lot of synthesizer-infused dream pop out there, and some of it’s quite good. I’d even be inclined to count this among the more recent “quite good” stuff, but it hardly touches the stuff of legend — precisely because it does nothing particularly new. It’s easy to fall into that with dream pop, as the basics just sort of, you know, sound cool. They’re relatively effective on their own, and when you add your own twist, it usually works. But there’s nothing more than a twist to be had — no sharp turns, no surprises, nothing of the sort.

No mistaking it, though: Soita Mulle is quite solid and is a great listen. For dream pop fans, this is certainly a great addition from 2011 — but if you’re here looking for foreign language pop music that blows everything out of the water, you might be in the wrong spot. Still, those melodies...