Wearing your heart on your sleeve is a cagey endevour, something which New Zealand’s indie deities The Clean go for broke with on Stars. For this cat it’s the most remarkable musical success of 2001, a year when indie took an ice cold shower and cured the jaded malady of the scurrying Brit Pop hangover. On their Getaway album, the wiley kiwis give alt-rock back its dignity. The stand out interstellar ode is a shimmering elegy to the sweet little mysteries of the galaxy, a droning bass gives the minimalist lyrics suitable company in the enchanting vortex, sexy old school synths (think Old Grey Whistle Test) dart in and out of the hypnotic imagism, a Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night for post-modern seers fleeing 21st Century pop culture proliferation.

Masters of subtle guitar pop since the late 1970s, The Clean summon control of a genre, that despite its familliarity, laughs heartily at any one label. Sporadic as they wish to be, those lyrical patterns, singular images of close natural comforts, trampoline themselves in slow motion all around the thickened blankets of rhythm guitar, a process of recall connected to west African bonfires or New Orleans moonlight rituals, with every participant staring mesmirised at the same dazzling source of infinte attraction. Not content to thrive on fads, The Clean engage you to the point where you cannot switch off 10 minutes after the track has finished, thus you return time and again to the spinning vortex, the familiarity of a trance that brings unspoken enlightenment.

Like Dylan Thomas, The Clean’s 5 minutes of overcoming the darkness throws misery and defeat onto their arses. In a void of infinte black there are stars that never surrender. The Clean’s telescopic souls pulsate with vigour, raging against the dying of the light.