Architecture In Helsinki

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You may not have expected it, all the way from Melbourne, but the first great modernist pop album of 2011 is here. Four years on since their last album, Architecture In Helsinki return with the hook-laden, magnetic and lush Moment Bends. It sounds like the album they’ve waited their whole lives to make, retaining the fizzing immediacy of its three predecessors and re-moulding with a more sophisticated, grown-up touch. In large parts, Moment Bends is in dialogue with the dance floor without being a slave to any particular rhythm. So imagine a sound equal parts Italia 1982, California 1979 and Melbourne 2011, glued together with a dynamic electronic bounce and a compelling romanticism.

Moment Bends was recorded over two years in the band's studio, Buckingham Palace, named after the huge photo mural of Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham that the band hung on the wall.“His hair was massive and his stare piercingly intense and mysterious,” Bird recalls of the man he calls, “a long-time spiritual influence.” Buckingham’s meticulous and mysteriously intense take on summery pop appears to have infiltrated Moment Bends highlights such as “Contact High”, ‘Everything’s Blue” and “Escapee”. But most of the album’s inspiration came from within the AIH camp, with Bird joined as usual by co-vocalist Kellie Sutherland, Gus Franklin, Jamie Mildren and Sam Perry. The quintet released the That Beep single in late 2008– the lithe and skittish track won its rightful place on Moment Bends – but the follow-up to 2007’s Places Like This album took its time to emerge. 

"We started writing in mid-2008," Bird recalls. "We had a love-hate relationship with the creative process. We wanted so bad to make a record that we didn't have to make excuses about, that we wouldn't cringe when we listened to it in ten years." To ensure they didn’t spend ten years making it, the band enlisted long-time friend Francois Tetaz to produce the new tracks. Bird says that Tetaz broke them out of their routine; “we were going over every single sound and inflection and ghosted note with a fine tooth comb, and at the same time it needed to feel effortless and not overworked.” Job well done, then, going by how the percolating synths, dovetailing vocals and charged beats merge in a flurry of excitable hooks. “We wanted to consolidate what was great about everything we'd done in the past, both in ideas and production, and then make that bigger, stronger and more focused,” Bird concludes. “It needed to have an intensity and depth that took you on a journey.”