Sally Shapiro

Electronic music has always received a bad rap for feeling cold and detached, and Swedish disco duo Sally Shapiro are a clear example of such. Somewhere Else finds producer Johan Agebjörn and vocalist Shapiro back together for the first time since 2009's My Guilty Pleasure and little has changed, with the duo hitting an icy plateau. Lost somewhere between Italo-disco and Scandinavian twee pop, Somewhere Else fails to cohere into anything interesting. Shapiro's voice is airy and romantic, but sounds awkwardly out of place, for the most part. Given a proper backdrop, similar to a Camera Obscura or She & Him, Shapiro could shine brighter; instead, here she's confined to the lacklustre sounds of Agebjörn. Numbers such as "I Dream with an Angel Tonight" and upbeat love song "Starman" are the rare occasions where everything works. At its best, Somewhere Else produces a few tracks worthy of putting on and dancing to in the middle of the night. At its worst, it's repetitive material that should've stayed on the cutting room floor.