Band of the Week: Architecture in Helsinki :: Features Music :: Articles

Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
Fun Fact: Places Like This came together via samples and fragments sent over e-mail and instant messenger between New York and Melbourne.
Why It's Worth Watching: These jaunty Australians have created yet another album of music with diverse, danceable collages that are simultaneously fun and challenging.
For Fans Of: The B-52's, Of Montreal, The Go! Team

At the end of the nineteenth century, George Ives, the father of legendary American composer Charles Ives, gave his son a musical education in the widest sense. A marching-band leader, the elder Ives would bring his son along as he literally crashed two bands into one another. For young Charles, the resulting sounds were beautiful and memorable in spite of the insane concept, and they inspired Ives’ own influential, radical music.

The members of Australian-based band Architecture In Helsinki would probably have enjoyed such an unconventional lesson in polytonality, since they revel in a similar kind of chaos. After all, the first moments of their new record simultaneously evoke a detuned radio, a car horn and the comically percussive sounds of early hip-hop. And that’s just the first track.

Places Like This is a wild, urban-street fair of an album. Each of its punchy 10 selections is upbeat, catchy and supremely exciting. “Underwater” sounds like it was actually recorded in an aquarium, “Like It Or Not” starts as a slowed-down sea shanty and turns into a sing-along, and “Heart It Races” may be the best single of the year, a beautifully produced thumper with steel drums and regular chanting. As it turns out, the mixed bag of influences on the record is owed at least in part to the band's deep commitment to spontaneity.

“We didn’t want to try and make another cabin-fever, self-engineered studio opus,” says Cameron Bird, the band’s songwriter and one of its vocalists. “We tracked the whole record in 12 days, which meant that it had to be super live. It was an exercise in embracing immediacy.”

For Places Like This, there were no lyrics etched in stone and no pre-determined instrumental assignments. When the band plays live, it frequently switches instruments and attempts to perfect the craziness. “We really wanted to capture the essence of us as a live band,” Bird says. “We wanted to have that same electric nature with hip-hop and dance elements in the synths and drums we used, but we didn’t want the to use sequencers or drum machines, so we learned how to play all the beats and synth riffs live. I think the songs are a lot stronger for that.”

The band also went through some big changes since 2005’s In Case We Die: It lost two members and Bird moved to New York. The impact of the latter was especially significant, since much of the songs came together over transcontinental e-mails and instant messages between South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Melbourne, Australia. Although Places is by no means a huge departure, the geographical change did affect its sound.

“Writing and recording a record there was just a new creative mindset,” Bird says. “It really forced us out of our shells in this kind of spontaneous, opportunist, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of way.”

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