Stars – In Our Bedroom after the War

 

The O.C. spearheaded a rise in the record sales of bands whose music could adequately convey the torment of beautiful rich teenagers, having beautifully rich problems, in a beautiful and rich setting. The lyrics of ‘Your Ex-Lover is Dead’ from Star’s sophomore album ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ resounded in the hearts of Newport kids- ‘This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin/Tried to reach deep but you couldn’t get in’- and the spoken-wordy section at the start allowed the producers to feel smug and slightly avant-garde. However, if ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ was Newport Beach, California, ‘In Our Bedroom after the War’ brings Stars back to their Canadian roots. ‘My Favourite Book’ could have been written by- or for- Feist and ‘Bitches in Tokyo’ sounds like a new Broken Social Scene track (hardly surprising given that Stars is practically a B.S.S. side-project). Yet, it would appear that during the musical move from Cali to Montreal the emotion was lost. Songs such as ‘The Night Starts Here’ move along prettily, but as Amy Millan sings on ‘Midnight Riot’- ‘Sweetness, sweetness never suits me’. Stars are at their peak when Millan and Campbell’s voices intertwine over bittersweet melodies and heartbroken, tentative lyrics- the beautiful ‘Personal’, or ‘Life 2: Unhappy Melody’.

In an attempt to avoid tracks leaking pre-emptively, ‘In Our Bedroom after the War’ was released onto itunes a full two weeks before it reached shops. They needn’t have bothered. While the record contains some gems, they are lost in the lush production. Stars cannot seem to reconcile their B.S.S. tendencies with their operas of the heart, leading to uncomfortable shifts and mood and sound throughout the album. On ‘Today Will be Better, I Swear’, Millan notes -‘You never knew just how to put out a fire’- yet perhaps they shouldn’t be trying to put it out…

BSS Presents Kevin Drew – Spirit If

Though ‘Spirit If…’ is ostensibly a Kevin Drew record, it stays firmly on B.S.S. territory. The influence of Spearin and Benchetrit (who guest on many of the tracks) is explicit, though never over-whelming, especially on ‘Safety Bricks’ and ‘Farewell to the Pressure Kids’. The romantic highlight- ‘Gang Bang Suicide’- sounds like a step-by-step template for a B.S.S. ballad- ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl’- by numbers- a breathy intro, climbing bass and soothing glitches before culminating in a lush forest of sound and sentiment, leaving the audience heart-struck and melancholy. However, without the constraints of B.S.S., (though one can’t imagine them being a particularly constrictive bunch), Drew draws on a broader spectrum of sounds- such as late Pixies (‘Backed Out on the Cause’) or Cornelius-like electronica (‘Big Love’) to flesh out his almost-solo effort. The ensuing sonic effect makes up for the lack of cohesiveness in the tempo, which careers from ambient to an Animal Collective-esque canter. Drew’s lyrics remain as elusive and subversive as ever, and the album showcases Drew’s favoured topics of ‘fucking, fighting, fearing and hope’. There are echoes of Springsteen, and of yearning, as Drew emotes in ‘Lucky Ones’- ‘When the crying separated in comes the sun/Heard it through a song that a girl once sung/She’s the reason why I’m trying to make it alright/Trying to drive through girl, wish it tonight’. In short, ‘Spirit If…’ sticks to its roots, whilst exploring new ground at the same time, allowing for a comforting, yet stimulating aural experience.

Misha – Teardrop Sweetheart

A quick glance at the track titles on ‘Teardrop Sweetheart’ yields uninspiring emotions. Titles such as : ‘Losing’, ‘Trying’ and ‘Cruelist Heart’ all denote a certain knowing melancholy that Sony BMG have latched onto as ‘the Next Big Thing’. Indeed, on the surface, the content would border on irritating if not for the peppy fashion in which the songs are delivered- light-hearted production, summer-evening chord progressions and Casio beats are mixed with witty, whimsical (and yes, melancholy) lyrics. However, it retains some of Tomlab’s signature sound: ‘Cruelist Heart’- brings to mind a high-pitched electro Manu Chao remix, and ‘Anaconda’ opens with one of the best line on the album- ‘Anaconda, sitting in her Honda/ Feedin’ in the parkin’ lot’. From ‘Anaconda’s tropical reptilian sway, to the Philip Dick-inspired ‘The Book (of Glaciers)’, the album remains simultaneously eclectic and cohesive, a fact which could either be testament to be Ashley Yao and John Chao’s musicality, but which would probably be more accurately attributed to the killer team of producers behind the record (Ted Gaier and Melissa Logan, to name but a few). Misha are at their best, though, when they eschew the remixes and are left alone singing over a Casio and a drum machine, as exemplified in the closing track- ‘Trying’. At a little less than 30 minutes for a debut album, ‘Teardrop Sweetheart’ is deceptively simplistic, charming on the ear, and far too brief.

Ewan Pearson – Piece Works

Pearson began dabbling in the art of remix in 1997 and this compilation is a collation of his best work from then until now.

Although Pearson successfully translates selected songs from pop to dance in this double album, and their acoustic grounding to one more electronically orientated you can’t help but feel that he hasn’t really brought anything that new to the song. He tends to repeat certain idea’s throughout the first disc, namely a frenetic techno infused descant that hovers above his introduced bass. On his remix of Goldfrapp’s infamous ‘Train’ he omits its captivatingly subversive bass line at the beginning in what appears to act as a means of redundant variation, especially since it is introduced anyway toward the end. Not that the remix doesn’t sound good, but most of the credit is due to Goldfrapp’s original song. This is the same, but to a lesser extent true for his remix of the Chemical Brother’s ‘The Golden Path’, which again sounds good but only in a slightly refurbished way.

I will admit though that I really liked his remix of Field’s ‘Song for the Fields’ with its Unkle-esque indie/electronica hybrid sound and there were flourishes of innovation to be found on Silver Cities ‘Shiver’.

Pearson should be credited more with his good taste in music rather then any innovation used in his remixes. Don’t get me wrong, when dancing under the influence, these monotonous perpetual beats will satisfy the debauched ‘Dancing no thinking’ frame of mind, but for those of a sober disposition its best to stick to the original tracks.

Tomlab – Puppy Love Compilation.

The Puppy Love Compilation is best exemplified by the liner picture- a group of kittens with their faces Tipp-exed out: Cute, quirky and a little messed up. For a record label that contains artists that are, at times, difficult to listen to, Tomlab have done a stellar job of making the compilation both credible and accessible at the same time. The impressive roster of artists on this German label ranges from The Blow, to Patrick Wolf, to Final Fantasy to Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, encompassing bands like Ninja High School and Simon Bookish along the way. The 21 track sampler begins with one of Pitchfork Media’s songs of the 2006 (‘Parentheses’ by The Blow)- a delicate, tentative and witty offering of, if not love, then at least mutual trust, set to a background of handclaps and an old 8-track recorder- and doesn’t let up until Xiu Xiu’s melodramatic ‘Suha’ closes. Tracks which would seem incongruous in any other setting -such as The Books ’found-sound- heavy ‘Smells Like Content’- nestle happily amongst Catholic rapping (Ninja High School), laptop beats (Simon Bookish) and classical violin (Final Fantasy). Put simply, the record is the audio equivalent of a teen crush- exciting, heartbreaking, uplifting, soul-crushing and exhilarating, all in an exponentially brief period of time. In short, Puppy Love.

Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam

Strawberry Jam sounds like an SNES drowning. That at least is the first impression you get from the opening synth freak-out of ‘Peacebone’. However gradually a lurching rhythm is beaten out of the messy salvo of noise, and as it turns itself inside out, clear melodic vocals catch you and transport you into the world of Animal Collective. Their world is dark and claustrophobic, but beams of light manage to pierce through the massing clouds overhead, lighting your way through the beast they have created.

The epic and hysterical ‘For Reverend Green’ builds into a disorientating and draining attack, but one which is laden with sweet hooks. It provides a fulcrum around which the other songs turn, on this relatively short album at nine tracks. The disappointing ‘Winter Wonder Land’ and the noise barrage of ‘Cuckoo Cuckoo’ are lumped into the second half of the disc. However the closer ‘Derek’, with it’s squelchy ‘under the sea’ a la Little Mermaid vibe, provides gentle release after the tumult of the previous forty minutes. But it is rather from ‘Peacebone’ through to ‘Fireworks’, that the real magic happens. ‘Unsolved Mysteries’, provides a ballad of sorts set to chopping beats and ‘Chores’ launches into attacks that constantly deconstruct and rebuild themselves. As for ‘Fireworks’ it is the beautiful come-down after the assault by the ‘For Reverend Green’

There is no doubt that this be could the standout album of the year. They have drawn a lot of their sound from the electronic meanderings of Black Dice, and Avey Tare and co-vocalist Panda Bear have started to sound like Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel. These aren’t bad things especially since Animal Collective couple them with a perfect balance of the humdrum, the fantastic and the menacing in their often indecipherable lyrics. On a first listen it may seem at times senseless and primal, but it’s a definite grower and the rewards offered by Animal Collectives pop sensibilities are nothing short of majestic.

“Strawberry Jam” by Animal Collective is released on Domino on the 14th September.
Animal Collective play Tripod on the 4th November.

The Art of Chill 4

The Art of Chill series is a compilation that delves into the dark back alleys of electronica to score us some quality ambient music.

The series comprises of various tracks compiled and mixed by guest artists, who share their eagerness to smear the two CD canvas with their own visions of chilled sound. From its fledgling beginnings mixed by Altitude, who stumbled through its infancy with tracks from Charlotte Church, Sinead O’ Connor and Oakenfold, on to Jon Hopkins’ mix of rebellious adolescent experimentation with Aphex Twin and Brian Eno and graduating with a third installation into System 7’s conglomerate with mixes of Tosca, I:Cube and Gaudi.

Therefore it seems only natural for the series to enter into its fourth run under the listless eyes of ‘The Orb’. An act so ambient, Noel Fielding of ‘Mighty Boosh’ fame coined the phrase ‘…more ambient then the Orbs third album’ to describe the hyperbolic blandness of his colleague’s personality. Obviously an absurd concept as its common knowledge (okay, that’s clearly a lie) that little exceeds the ambience of the Orbs third album.

Trust them then on the second CD of this compilation to deliver us an ambient rendition of the angst saturated ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, a razor-wire song once belted from the raw throat of Kurt Cobain. Utilising the opiate lament of a sitar, the song is rinsed free of any former rage replacing it instead with subversive Eastern chill.

Beginning the compilation with Bowie’s Warszawa is a brave move setting a standard of legendary proportions, especially as it is Eno produced. Alex Patterson of the Orb reminisces in an aptly nostalgic tone about how in the humble surroundings of a bedsit in Earls Court circa ’78 they ‘would put a record on to fall asleep to and that was usually side 2 of Low album by David Bowie’

Given the stamp of approval by the man himself with his cooperation in the making of this album, I think gives the Orb adequate reason to establish it with this song.

Of course, no chill out record would be complete without the token Eno track, but oddly his input into this album lacks the electronica edge that usually gilds his songs. Instead the Orb have substituted it with a more acoustically directed track of Eno’s, which serves effectively in breaking up any threat of an electronica white-wash. Other songs that mercifully splinter the ambient relay of tracks include ‘Dub Power’ (you can probably guess the genre of that one yourself) and a track brought to us by Ulf Lohmann which would feel more at home among derelict Soviet block buildings in some Eastern ghetto.

Other tracks are simply beautifully arranged pieces of music as heard on the melancholic strings of Nina Walshe’s Narcissist and of course Ennio Morricone’s orchestral track which dodges in and out through the chicanes of an epic score and nonchalant stroll. Obviously, the Orb had the luxury of mixing their choice of tracks on this album minimizing their excuses for any erroneous features. But regardless of this they still provide some of the best material on these CD’s themselves, demonstrated on their song ‘Codes’.

That’s not to say that this album is fault free, perhaps at times shimmying on the ledge of monotony with tracks like ‘Gas 1’ as its relentless ventilator rhythm pulses through, unchanging until the subsequent track rescues it from plunging into the banal. The 2 CD anthology of all things ambient concludes with the mellow lullaby of Husky Rescue enticing us to ‘Sleep Tight Tiger’.

In a perfect world (one free of Irish weather, supplemental exams and the swarms of Spanish students hell bent on bottle-knecking Grafton Street) this album would be best listened to while relaxing lightly tipsy beneath the warmth of the evening sun outside post-exam Pav…in a perfect world.

I confess that when I heard that the Orb were to be the compilers of ‘The Art of Chill 4’, I expected a litany of tracks taking ambience to extreme lengths of minimalism, best indulged while getting baked Vancouver style.

But now after experiencing its tranquil but by no means mundane mix, I gladly concede defeat and stub out my insult. Better still, follow Patterson’s advice and “Crack open a chilled Guinness and think on…”

Paul Hartnoll – The Ideal Condition

It has been three years since the disbanding of Orbital, moniker of the legendary fraternal duo, Paul and Phil Hartnoll, and both have simultaneously chosen this summer to come out with their first major individual releases. Whereas Phil Hartnoll’s collaboration with Nick Smith under the name Long Range seems to have gone under the radar, Paul, who has also provided tracks for the Wipeout Pure compilation has been quickly embraced and with good reason too. His success lies mainly in the fact that he does not attempt to revive Orbital’s distinctive sound instead, distancing himself as much as possible from it with an album featuring a full orchestra and 32 piece choir.

This contrast is especially apparent in songs like ‘The Unsteady Waltz’ and the album’s concluding song, ‘Dust Motes’ featuring the unexpected melancholic voice of a solo violin which culminates in a fugue of orchestral instruments enriched with an atmospheric Danny Elfman inspired choral arrangement.

Hartnoll tames down his cinematic, soundscaped enthusiasm in pop infused songs like ‘Nothing else Matters’ and ‘For Silence’ striking a nice balance between Lianne Hall’s vocals and the string saturated chords that explode into the song after the verse.
That’s not to say that this album doesn’t cater for those of the electro/dance inclined who will find solace with the electronica haven of ‘Patchwork guilt’ and songs like the tenacious and brilliantly noisy ‘Aggro’. Along with this ‘Please’ with its imploring vocals provided by the Cure’s Robert Smith helps to inject that bit of aggression and danceable rhythm into this otherwise acoustic but very impressive debut release.

Rollercoasters and tiny cities

Craig Thorn, Mark Kozelek, and the Red House Painters

If you’re browsing a music shop, or for that matter a music magazine, it doesn’t take long to learn the first law of art: the world is full to the brim with failed geniuses. The right combination of talent and drive is rare enough. But with mass media, the talent doesn’t matter much anymore; whether you’re hawking “pop” albums or reviewing “indie” albums, it’s often the image, not the music, that is being sold. This brings us to the second law of art: the world is equally full of the successfully talentless. The amount of pure luck and coincidence involved in commercial success makes it virtually impossible to predict, much less understand.

The musical situation thus becomes painful for everyone involved. Record companies turn down the best albums, because they’re too risky. Reviewers, DJs, and the dwindling owners of great record shops exhaust themselves looking for something obscure enough to seem cool, but good enough to justify. Consumers of music — people who want to experience perhaps 60 minutes of timeless human joy on which no price can be placed, other than €18.99 at HMV — are lost in the supermarket. We are told to buy an album because it’s played at Starbucks, or because the single opens that TV show that we like, or because the magazine owned by the conglomerate that recorded, marketed, and distributed it thinks it’s a masterpiece.

This is why we have friends. In an offhand remark in the acknowledgements of his book Mystery Train — a book good enough to read the acknowledgements — Greil Marcus wrote this line: “As much as anything, rock ‘n’ roll has been the best means to friendship that I know.” I always misremember this line as stating something like the equation “music = friendship.” While Marcus doesn’t quite say this, I feel I should attribute the idea to him. Friendship might indeed arise from sharing the music, but in my life it often led me to the music in the first place.

I met Craig Thorn eleven years ago this autumn, when I moved to Boston from Texas to attend boarding school. He ran my dormitory, where he made epic barbecue and brilliant jokes, as well as the English department, where he taught a class on junk (of all kinds) in American literature. Our first conversation was about music; this was how he learned about each of the 38 guys to whom he had to be a father each year. In that conversation, I revealed my interest in an English band called Catherine Wheel, one of the great underrated rock combos of the nineties. If this earned me a modicum of his respect, the ensuing dialogue earned Craig my undying admiration, tinged with a kind of terror; he promptly named five other more obscure (but technically related) bands that I might enjoy if I liked Catherine Wheel. Basically, he was Pandora, in the days before the internet.

Craig’s boundless musical knowledge and record collection were intimidating to encounter for the first time, but I quickly realized that they were made to share. He ran a student magazine — Backtracks — in which he wrote lengthy, almost philosophical music criticism; he was a manager and legendary DJ for the school radio station. It was impossible to meet him and not find your horizons expanded. While this might have started with something as simple as borrowing a CD, the real horizons in question were not musical, but human. More than simply a means to friendship, music held the possibility for Craig of an encounter with the whole world, a catalogue of experience wider than his own. Music was a means to, and a definition of, family and community. Both were his reason for living.

Such a man does not have a favourite band. Nonetheless, in the late nineties, Craig was a missionary of the Red House Painters. He wrote about them, it seemed, at every possible opportunity, in school publications as well as major magazines. I have none of these articles anymore, but I remember a blizzard of eloquence that convinced me to knock on his door one day and borrow everything they had ever recorded. I saw Songs for a Blue Guitar on sale in 1998 in Chicago, at a record store that no longer exists, and bought it immediately. Gradually I collected every disc, somewhat because I liked the music, but mainly because of Craig.

The Red House Painters formed in 1989, the same year that the Pixies came to take the kids. They made a decade’s worth of albums in San Francisco, after which the lead singer and driving force, Mark Kozelek, went amicably solo. Their quiet and introspective music was never quite in step with the times, which were more defined by loud introspection; the poor reviews said that the Red House Painters were about despair, while the good ones said they were about nostalgia. Success on a massive commercial scale eluded them, partly because Mark Kozelek is that kind of genius who finds self-promotion painful, and partly because he insisted on making the music that was necessary for him. If others see him as a failed genius, it is not how Kozelek sees himself; on the contrary, his album was in stores when he was 25, and he felt like a rock star. In 1999 a two disc Retrospective was released; regardless of sales, this doesn’t happen to just anyone.
The first label to press a Red House Painters album was the formidable 4AD, which released Down Colorful Hill (1992) on the strength of some reverb-soaked demo tapes. It was followed with two self-titled albums, better known by their brooding cover images, Rollercoaster (May 1993) and Bridge (October 1993). The stunning Ocean Beach was released in 1995, and then abruptly — in the face of a small but obsessive fan base, excellent critical reception, and growing popularity in Europe — the label opted not to release Songs for a Blue Guitar, and dropped the band.

For those DJs, reviewers, buyers, and label owners who are prospecting for gold, it’s usually a pretty good sign when a label drops a band over an album. As Robbie Robertson said of The Band, “Music should never be harmless.” A fight over a recording signals that something actually different has just appeared, and that someone in power is scared; Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a classic example, but the final two Red House Painters albums each did time in legal purgatory. Supreme Records, an Island subsidiary, snapped up Songs for a Blue Guitar and released it in 1996; the follow-up Old Ramon was scheduled for 1998, but was withheld by Island during the merger wars of the late 1990s, and wasn’t released until 2001 on SubPop, after Kozelek bought it back. These struggles also ended the band, and the next four releases were of Kozelek playing alone.

Songs for a Blue Guitar was the first true synthesis of Kozelek’s many influences and moods. The opener seems to fit the pattern of the back catalogue, with a singer-songwriter formula and emotive, autobiographical lyrics. The second song, one of two title songs, is the same but different, featuring the only female backing vocal in the whole Kozelek discography. Nothing in that discography could possibly prepare you for the third song, “Make Like Paper,” which is rumoured to be one of the two songs on the disc which ended the relationship with 4AD. It is 12 minutes of fierce backbeat and Crazy Horse guitar distortion. It features a 5 minute guitar solo after the first chorus, a solo so rich and daring it suggests Hendrix, Robert Johnson, and Mahler. After the Gibson screams and is possibly in flames, Kozelek goes on singing as though nothing out of the ordinary has just occurred. It is out of the ordinary on a folk label. It might as well be hip-hop.
This is one of many moments on the album that explodes preconceptions. There are covers of songs by Yes (“Long Distance Runaround”), the Cars (“All Mixed Up”) and Paul McCartney (“Silly Love Songs”). An aptly titled, trifling piece of work, this last piece is totally resurrected in the retelling; this time, the five-minute display of absurd guitar virtuosity is at the beginning of the song. The expressive rage and unadulterated beauty offered here properly earns the opening line, “you’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs,” and when we hear the chorus that McCartney made insipid — “I love you” — we actually believe the Red House Painters. Mark Kozelek brings real artistry to his covers; his solo album from 2001, What’s Next to the Moon, consists entirely of Bon Scott-era AC/DC songs, which are tender and unrecognizable, and his most recent project with Sun Kil Moon — a kind of Red House Painters 2.0 — is the album Tiny Cities, composed of twelve Modest Mouse songs transposed into Kozelek’s reflective and minimalist style. As these seemingly insane career moves suggest, Mark Kozelek is remarkably adept at avoiding irony, even when singing songs that seem to need them. On Old Ramon, he pulls off a love song to his cat.

In 2003, Kozelek and his drummer Anthony Koutsos reformed as Sun Kil Moon, releasing first Ghosts of the Great Highway and then Tiny Cities in 2005. Ghosts continues the best traditions of the Red House Painters, but with the illusion of a new band; it was Kozelek’s most successful album to date, if someone is counting by sales. It is a lush and unified album, telling stories about famous boxers who died young; obsessed with death, the album celebrates life. The old fascinations with memory and geography are firmly in place, but the singer has become a bard, and moved well beyond simple autobiography and despair. This is no more failed genius by any measure; this is a man doing what he loves as though it were second nature.

Sun Kil Moon sounds for all the world like Kozelek has “grown up.” Somewhere between the first time I heard them and now, as I’ve moved around the world carrying the albums with me, so have I. Kozelek’s joys, sorrows, landscapes, and women have accompanied me. As always happens with great music, the sounds and words are now bound up with my own memories. I’ve done my best to pass this music on to friends so that they can carry this reflection of the world, and perhaps a piece of me. I’ve tried to make friends with the music, and music with the friends.

I also continue to listen to Kozelek’s work to carry a piece of Craig, who passed on down the great highway on 12 June 2006, at the age of 47. He left behind such a cacophonous legacy of sounds in the hands and minds of those who knew him that it hardly would be accurate to say that he is gone. The lives of those that knew him — and their CD collections — are the Retrospective that confirms his place. In his case, music finally did become the friendship, since the music is all I can encounter down the old pathways where he was. Even though the song is not about him, I have never listened to “Make Like Paper” without thinking of the first autumn that I met Craig, or the last summer that I saw him.

Leaves are turning brown
All over the ground
Leaves make like paper
Make like paper sound

[5-minute guitar solo]

Way back, back then
I considered you my best friend
But the last time I saw you
I knew I’d never see you again.

Architecture in Helsinki

Architecture in Helsinki are an octet hailing from Melbourne on a mission to pepper your ear drums with the finest indie pop that will make you do the whirlwind, whatever that may be. Three albums in with the fabulously playful Places Like This just released this spring. They have succeeded in fashioning a sound full of eccentricity, combining the stranger spectrum’s of indie rock with the simplicity of pop. This is a band not only intelligent but also frolicsome who are well worth splashing out a few bob of your hard earned cash on.

So what are we to make of these antipodean pop stars? I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to the uber friendly and charming Kellie Sutherland. Just like the band she eschews normality. “I’m a modern day musical gypsy” Kellie happily pronounces when I mention what must be the travails of being in a band these days with constant touring and push and pull between concert venue and recording studio. “I got rid of all my stuff. I pretty much have what’s in my suitcase and a few boxes of records and CD’s and books in my family’s storage space” she says with a friendly smile. “It’s quite liberating. You should try it!” Em, I don’t know. Does one not long for the comforts of home, the feeling of “Damn! My favourite sweater’s in Melbourne and I am in San Fran!” but Kellie is resolute. This is a woman changed by touring and the relative ease of modern day travelling. “It has really changed my mind about looking at things and how much impact I was making on the earth. I said to myself ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I have accumulated this stuff to begin with!” So there you go folks, touring is good for the soul and the environment. I’m not sure it is the life for me.

Constant touring and experiencing new environments and cities has over the course of time slowly changed the dynamic and style of the band. Change is definitely the correct term to use to describe the last two years, especially the time between the most recent album and the one prior to it, the strangely named In Case We Die. A change of scenery for some band members-the vibrancy and cacophony of Brooklyn for lead singer and songwriter Cameron and Kellie, well, all over the place, have brought about a shift in direction for the band. This has enamoured the band with new fans but also alienated one or two who feel the new, more pronounced electro sound anathema to them. So has this new environment aided the new shift in style? “Definitely the intensity of the environment in Brooklyn had a huge impact on how Cameron wrote the songs and being away from home changes the way you think about recording” Kellie tells me.

With band members strewn across the world it seemingly brings up the question of how does one record an album together? If Cameron’s in America, the rest of the band in Australia and Kellie somewhere between San Fran and Mumbai can a band actually work separately? It seems you can and Architecture in Helsinki are testament to that. So how does one do I? “We wrote songs without actually playing them together”. Odd….”It sounds like a really strange concept but it kind of worked for us and the record. If Cameron hadn’t moved then we were at risk of making the same album and that was the last thing we wanted” So how was this done I ponder. “We wrote the songs and demos and sent them over instant messenger and we would have meetings once a week online and talk about ideas and swop ideas and piece together songs” Ah the wonders of modern technology!

The change continued into the recording and producing fields of the album Places Like This. “Cameron had this world drum machine which could make loops and I think just one or two synths. The initial demos that turned into songs really infiltrated how the band sounded. We didn’t have horns as melody makers as in the last two albums” So it seems we have found the origin of this progression to a more electro sound. “We have been touring for quite a few years” Kellie continues. “We did the first two albums ourselves. (Fellow band member) Gus did a lot of engineering. On this last record we had our own engineer and the pace that we recorded was a hundred times quicker. Our ideas and how we expressed them were really turned quickly into reality. It was pretty amazing!”

So a new lease of life and experience into an already lively and intelligent band augur well for the future of Architecture in Helsinki. So I bid adieu to Kellie as she continues on her worldwide tour and look forward to the next musical instalment from Melbourne’s finest.

« Previous Page — Next Page »