Listened Architecture in Helsinki: Moment Bends from Pitchfork

Australian indie-pop band continues to move away from the precocious and cute toward a more streamlined, highly polished sound.

I think that Architecture in Helsinki are one of those bands divides people. Similar in a way to Sparkadia, people either gel to the sugary synth-pop or are put off. Personally, Moments Bend is one of those albums that feels like a bodily album, in that I often catch myself tapping away to the beat. I think it is interesting to consider the process for listening to mixes in the car to get a perspective:

Whenever they finished a mix of a song, they would pile into their producer Francois Tetaz‘s car and go on a late night drive down a stretch of a Melbourne freeway and listen to the freshly minted mix.

This wasn’t for self-congratulatory purposes, more as a way of making one final check.

“That thing when you’re traveling and listening to music, unless it makes you sort of reinterpret and re-imagine your surroundings, it’s not quite working,” frontman Cameron Bird explained to triple j in 2011.

For a different take on their music, they also demonstrate the ability to re-imagine things more acoustically:

I would file this album somewhere between Talking Heads and Hot Chips.