Band : Architecture In Helsinki
Album title : Moment Bends
Label : Cooperative Music
Distributor : V2 Benelux
Release date : 11/04/2011
Release : CD

To be quite honest, after listening to this album the first couple of times I wasn't sure how I was gonna handle its review. Meanwhile some time passed, and thanks to a busy personal schedule where I was unable to start writing but did have the time to give Moment Bends some additional listening sessions, I decided the bast way to go was to start with the history of this Melbourne based Australian Pop act.

The origins of AIH go back to the late '90s, in the New South Wales town of Albury (situated a rough 300 km inland and North-East from Melbourne), where Cameron Bird and fellow AIH members Jamie Mildren and Sam Perry were already active in Funk/ Grunge act The Pixel Mittens. After some time the threesome moved to Melbourne, played shows at a couple a smaller venues, and kinda faded out. Bird started studying photography at an art school, and there he met James Cecil in the year 2000 gelling immediately with him on common musical tastes. Soon after Cecil had joined the band on drums. Kellie Sutherland was met at a party, and invited into the band to play clarinet on some of the band's songs. The band then started writing the songs for their debut album, but recordings (at Cecil's own studio) were halted when Bird suddenly took an extended vacation to Portland, Oregon. The trip had however been positive as far as inspirations go, because upon his return Bird wrote three quarters of the band's upcoming debut, marked by short but catchy Pop songs. He also went back to art school, from where he enlisted Isobel Knowles, Tara Shackell, and Gus Franklin into the band. AIH's Fingers Crossed was eventually released in February 2003 (later to be picked up by US label Bar/ None). Sophomore album In Case We Die came in 2005, issued through the band's own Tailem Bend label and featuring contributions by many local Melbourne musicians. The album got 3 Aria Award nominations (Australian equivalent of the Grammies), and the album's track “It'5” was played extensively on Australian national radio network Triple J (it also got to #56 in their annual countdown Triple J Hottest 100 for that year). Citing “musical differences” as the cause, Knowles and Shackell were ousted from the band in mid 2006, and October of the same year saw the release of remix album We Died, They Remixed. Around the same time the band had already started work on some songs for their third album Places Like This, which would be released late July 2007. New songs were already played during the band's Autumn tour. Several singles were culled from this album, with “Heart It Races” and “Hold Music” got to # 19 and 36 respectively in the 2007 Triple J Hottest 100. Cecil left the band after a last show on Jan. 1st 2008. Working up to a new full-length, the band then released the EP That Beep in November 2008. AIH have been on several national and international tours. In the US, they supported Death Cab For Cutie and Clap Your Hands, and they've opened for the likes of David Byrne (formerly of Talking Heads), the polyphonic Spree, Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian. Which rounds off our history-of-the-band bit.

You know something? I had heard of this band before, and from the first time I had told myself that a band with such a name simply hàd to be something special. Well...I was right of course, but not in any way I had been able to imagine. You see, when listening to Moment Bends for the first time, I was really put off due to the band's use of somewhat effeminate vocal stylings. But as I gave the album consecutive listening sessions I actually got into the wacky keyboards rhythms and partial Dance floor songs. On top, they have 2 songs (the somewhat Suzanne Vega-sounding “W.O.W.” and the utterly catchy “That Beep” with a staring female vocal role for Sutherland) and two more songs (“Sleep Walkin'” and “Denial Style”) see her sing passages as well. Some songs even see an electric guitar being used...not as an instrument to introduce a degree of “heaviness” in the whole though. End of the line, bands with this type of vocal stylings have been known to become rather popular in Pop music before (just take Prince, for instance), and with rhythmic material like the one on Moment Bends, I see no reason why these Aussies would not be allowed to enjoy a certain degree of popularity as well! To find out how you might feel about the band, check the two songs off this album (“Contact High” is the one song on the album with some decent (synth?) guitar played on it) alongside older material.

88/100

Tony.