The name notwithstanding, Shine 2009 are partying like it’s 1991. Realism, the debut record by Helsinki duo Sami Suova and Mikko Pykäri, bubbles with downtempo, clubby beats and laid-back, hazy vocals that go down easy, like a Fuzzy Navel in a darkened disco while you also happen to be getting sorted for E’s and wizz for the first time. All that’s missing is a pair of baggy trousers and a vague sense of regret the next morning. This is 90s dance indie, boiled down, edited and updated to chilled perfection. “I wouldn’t change a thing about my world, everything is just right,” deadpans Suova on ‘One’. Over the course of this cool, very listenable 38-minute LP, you know that he means it.

The good thing about pastiching the 90s, though, is that the bands from that era were pastiche artists themselves, borrowing liberally from 60s pop, northern soul and early disco. What made albums like Saint Etienne’s landmark Foxbase Alpha stand out was the sheer perspective and individual charm that the band brought to the creative recombining of their source material. As a pastiche of a pastiche, then, Shine 2009 are pretty much wholly unoriginal, but pop music has always been less about musical form as such and more about the personality that one brings to it.

In Shine 2009’s case, that personality is a welcome shade more melancholic than certain other dance revivalists that have been coming out of the woodwork in Finland’s Nordic neighbor, Sweden. In ‘New Rules’, for example, Suova recalls waking up one day screaming: “I knew I had to do something”. In this context, the sing-along mantra “get ready for the new rules” sounds less like hyper-confident dancefloor swagger and more like a desperate gambit to escape a dead end in life. Even the promised bliss of ‘So Free,’ with backing vocals by Paula Abdul (yes, that Paula Abdul; apparently she’s a friend of the label, Cascine) sounds more contingent than guaranteed. There are cracks of vulnerability beneath the aloof cool, and for Shine 2009 that makes all the difference.

One hopes that Realism also helps draw attention to Pykäri’s other project, the marvelous Regina, who have released three very likeable albums of synth-laden indie pop since 2005, with a fourth on the way this year. With Regina the focus is on Pykäri’s wife Iisa’s more playfully offbeat Finnish lyrics and an intoxicating cocktail of synthpop, ambient electronica and even the odd tango. You might call them original – just don’t hold that against them.