The cutesy playground song of Architecture in Helsinki goes full-on bubblegum synthpop.

The new album Moment Bends from the Australian quintet vacillates between soft rock epic and something that can only be described as New Age Caribbean. Touring in white tuxedos with iridescent cummerbunds apparently they stumbled into a time machine. The album’s influence is heavily 1980s.

Waiting to watch this band mature from the playfulness of In Case We Die (2005), it was unfortunately overtaken by bass and lazy hooks in Places Like This (2007). After the disparaging success of Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009), something they feel to be their sound-cousin, Architecture has pulled out the works.

Glockenspiels and thumpy bass are replaced by electronica. Opening with the exotic Mr. Mister inspired flute of “Desert Island” followed by the bubble gum synth of “Escapee.” "WOW" stands out as the first Architecture to fully feature Kelly Sutherland’s voice in all its Belinda Carlisle beauty. Each has its own yesteryear underpinnings: “Everything’s Blue” is to Starship as “I Know Deep Down” is to Dream Academy. Then the mishmash of Prince and Chaz Jankel that gives us “Denial Style.” In the end this newer sound makes it more plausible that they would compare themselves to Phoenix, the most dancey being the singles “Contact High” and “That Beep.” Of course, all dancey isn’t created equal.

 

Something missing entirely: the horn. The electropop is bereft of its former symphonic horn and piano section. They can no longer be confused with Half-Handed Cloud. They’re not just alto-whisper-singing over a moderately stoned half-marching band anymore. Architecture in Helsinki has finally grown up, and now she is a sexy young woman with leg warmers and spiked booties. You know, one with a dancing montage where she puts on makeup in her underwear. Who doesn’t want that in their ear?

Someone referred to this album as “rebuilding the 80s,” in so much as you’ll like it as much as you liked the music from back then. Me, I like this album, but I’d rather have spikes driven into my ears than listen to Mr. Mister's “Broken Wings.” Architecture described their album as making music they themselves want to listen to. It’s more of a reimagining than a rebuilding. Never the less there’s that shameful love of dancing to “That Beep” because you know what you are doing is essentially Jazzercise.

That Beep by Architecture In Helsinki
 
Apparently the name of the band is arbitrary. If you ask them, they have no idea why they're named Architecture in Helsinki. In fact they didn’t play in Finland until 2007. Here’s what they weren’t referring to:

 

Freelance writer, novelist, and fiction editor for Prick of the Spindle Sarah Rae lives and writes in Brooklyn.