Since the release of their excellent 2005 record, “In Case We Die,” eccentric Aussie band Architecture in Helsinki has grown in popularity to a degree nobody saw coming, permanently marring the collective consciousness of indie America.
As indicated by countless Facebook lists and gushy rock blogs, plenty of folks are fully ga-ga for AIH’s inimitable ADD style, which sounds something like the love child of the Unicorns, old school Of Montreal and the Muppets.
With all the love coming their way, you’d expect AIH to craft a third album that really blows their fanbase of foreign pseudo-scenesters out of the water.
Too bad for us, new release “Places Like This” is a brief, underdeveloped album that promises brilliance and delivers only a little fun. While “In Case We Die” had both heart and soul amid its jungle-tinged bedlam, “Places Like This” comes and goes too quickly in a swirl of nonsense syllables and hyperactive rhythms.
Just when you hear something you love in a song, that noise disappears or becomes unrecognizably augmented, leaving you disappointed or disoriented.
The irony here is that AIH fails not because they’re bad, but because they’re wonderful yet unwilling to test the limits of the listener’s wonder.
Well, at least it all begins promisingly. Joyful opener “Red Turned White” introduces the recent shift in AIH’s style with fast tempos and an increase in guttural gibberish.
Next, we get lead single “Heart It Races,” a miniature safari of a song constructed from addictive calypso beats and patented silliness.
By the time the third (and best) track “Hold Music” takes its toll, you may already be bragging to your friends about the new album you’ve discovered.
However, the album’s downhill slide begins with the following tracks. “Feather in a Baseball Cap” and “Underwater” stay awkwardly grounded, and the last two tracks are just plain forgettable. Only “Debbie” from the album’s latter half had me dancing in my seat, and even that song’s success is marginal compared to the better tracks from past AIH releases.
All in all, “Places Like This” never quite ascends to the heights promised by its creators’ reputable ingenuity or their word-of-mouth esteem.
Still, I’m too staunch of an Architecture in Helsinki fan to hate on them entirely.
This may not be their best work, but they retain a signature style that’s loads better than any of the vapid clones you’ll hear on American pop radio, better even than most indie songs that sound like, well, every other indie song.
To end this confusion, here’s my final call: If you haven’t yet, buy “In Case We Die” and experience the madcap bombast AIH has to offer.
If you like that enough, go ahead and try “Places Like This.” It’s a sure disappointment, but in the face of the modern confusion between commerce and art, everything AIH touches is a diamond in the rough.
