ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI: MOMENT BENDS (2011)
1) Desert Island; 2) Escapee;
3) Contact High; 4) W.O.W.; 5) Yr Go To; 6) Sleep Talkin'; 7) I Know Deep Down;
8) That Beep; 9) Denial Style; 10) Everything's Blue; 11) B4 3D.
Architecture in Helsinki's fourth album does
revert some of the inauspicious
changes witnessed on Places Like This
— namely, it does not sound nearly as dumb and irritating, with significantly
less emphasis on dated dance beats and idiot vocals: my guess is that Bird did
pay attention to at least some of the original reviews, and understood that he
went a little too far in his search for a new face for the band. Alas, though,
neither is this a proper return to the potentially pleasant atmospherics of In Case We Die. Formally, it is more
like a meticulously calculated averaged value of both these albums —
multiplied by a continuous lack of interest in improving the overall level of
songwriting.
At least the early records told a tale of a
fairyland child playground, and Places
Like This told the tale of a dance floor for hopeless morons: you could see
the former as «cute», and the latter as «awful». Moment Bends merges these notions and thoroughly neutralizes them,
so that, for the first time in AiH history, I am utterly perplexed, as the
album leaves me with zero emotional
impressions, and I mean that seriously. I have no idea what the record is
trying to say, why it exists, how it should be interpreted, whether it should
be considered «art», etc., etc. My current opinion — subject to change,
perhaps, but only if I decide to continue exploring the album further, which is
not very likely — is that the band has simply lost its way, completely: having swerved from the
experimental, but promising path right into a dense thicket, for no reason
other than stupidity, they are now proceeding blindly, without the least idea
of what it is they are doing.
In some historical situations, perhaps, such
blind prancing can produce unexpectedly delightful results — but not if you are
Cameron Bird and his followers. Take the first track, ʽDesert Islandʼ. It is
put together as a ska-based number, but uses cold electronic tones and an
equally «icy» vocal style: that is, a rhythmic basis normally used to express
smily joy is overridden with stimulants of «cold beauty» — the two successfully
kill off each other, and I have not even yet mentioned the general
monotonousness and complete lack of attention-attracting melodic twists.
Going on to track No. 2, ʽEscapeeʼ, we find a
simple, but «potentially efficient» rubber-springed synth-pop riff that eats up
everything else about the song (including a vivacious funky guitar part that is
only properly audible for about two bars), except for the multi-tracked vocals
which try, a bit, to push you in the
direction of escapist idealism, but hardly succeed — too glossy and plastic is
the processing, too expressionless the singing. And, once again, it's just one
repetitive idea bouncing up and down for the entire duration of the song.
As usual, those tunes that are vocally
dominated by Sutherland are a trifle more accessible and enjoyable: ʽW.O.W.ʼ
(which is actually short for ʽWalking On Waterʼ) sounds like Enya on amphetamines,
and at least its icy romanticism passes the «credible» mark. But even Sutherland
ultimately embarrasses herself on the «Prince-for-five-year-olds» bubbly dance
groove of ʽThat Beepʼ and on the robotic electro-funk of ʽDenial Styleʼ.
Actually, the phrase «significantly less
emphasis on the dance beats» that I used above by no means is supposed to say
that the dance beats have gone away — on the contrary, about 80% of the album
can still be formally qualified as «dance-pop». The difference is that the
beats are getting softer, and, most importantly, no longer stimulate the
singers into behaving like a bunch of overworked DJs with no sense of taste or
measure. But for some weird reason, they still insist on having a
«body-oriented» underbelly to most of these tunes — even if, whatever that
particular essence of Architecture In Helsinki could be, it is not in any way related to dance music.
It's as if, oh, I don't know, Bob Dylan got so infatuated with Italian opera
that he would try to imitate Pavarotti on every one of his records, ignoring
the critical horror and the dwindling record sales. Same type of silliness, if
on a smaller scale — quite a natural cause for a thumbs down.
Check "Moment Bends" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Moment Bends" (MP3) on Amazon
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