Don't let the cozy Mars-scape on the cover or the floating astronauts pictured in the liner notes fool you. The closest this album gets to the future is - like 8-track players, wicker hanging chairs and black light posters before it - a retro version of it. Rick Hromadka, brainchild of Maple Mars (he essentially built the band and gave it a name after making this album solo; this band debuted at the International Pop Overthrow festival this week) and once founding member of L.A. locals Double Naught Spies, has remorselessly created a tableau redolent of the past in Welcome to; there's the spacey sounds of ELO in here and the Beatles just as they began to get trippy. There's a little Roy Orbison in Hromadka's voice and - heck, why not? - a goodly amount of '70s power pop (think Cheap Trick, Styx even) thrown in for measure. Thankfully (Who-like drum solo please) it comes out sounding good. Once you get over the fact that you've been taken on a space coaster ride filled with albums from Hromadka's youth (and that some of the songs are so poppy it sometimes feels as if they are actively tricking you into liking them), Welcome to feels like a stoney flight of imagination taken from the comfort of your own bean bag while wearing oversized woodgrain headphones -"Welcome to Maple Mars" is a great tune and so too is "When Atlas Falls," "All Brand New" and "Absolute Zero." Also, be on the lookout for a hidden track; Groovy, man, groovy.