They've got nothing to do with construction or Finland, but the Australian band known as Architecture in Helsinki are building a formidable reputation, writes Jim Carroll.
NATURALLY the band's name is the first thing to grab your attention. Whatever about the unquestionable architectural merits of the Finnish capital, the name in this case describes an eight-strong orchestral psychedelic pop band from Melbourne. These Architects from Down Under produce music which is every jot as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing as anything a master draughtsman could conjure up. And, you can dance to it.
Listen to AIH's latest album, In Case We Die, and strap yourself in. Its breath-taking scope will astound you. Drama awaits at every chord change. Strings rattle and thump. Choruses turn into giddy explosions. A song which begins with one idea finishes with something else entirely. Over 20 different instruments make out without causing a mess. There's more action here than you'll get in the average Crocodile Dundee flick.
Yet AIH are as much about grandeur and grace as thunder and lightening. The word "twee" has been used on occasions but, hold on, come back and put all those thoughts of fey boys and girls out of your mind. We are not dealing with the Field Mice here, people. AIH's songs may be dream-like and infectious, yet they are also brash, bold and brassy. You tend to get that when a band has a trombone and knows how to use it.
For the band, then, these are the good days. Having released the quite decent if not earth-shattering Fingers Crossed debut in 2003, it's gratifying for them to see the huge leap between albums being so widely acknowledged. AIH leader Cameron Bird puts it all down to the band learning how to do things properly. "On the first album we were still a baby band and we didn't really know what it was we were doing. We just stood in front of a microphone and pressed "record", so the album has a naivety about it that was really genuine.
"Between albums we'd played maybe 100 shows, and I think we became really good friends and more of a band, rather than just eight people who happened to play music together. It was a lot more focused and we knew what we wanted a lot more and had a lot more confidence.
"There's an intensity and a force that is absent from the first album. We didn't really have a map or a plan or an idea of what we were doing with the new album; it just happened. The new album was a lot more spontaneous."
It helps that they've survived a few years together without a member up on manslaughter or grievous bodily harm charges as a result of a run-in with another Architect. Bird talks about "a demented school camp vibe" to AIH, but he doesn't deny that there have been moments to forget.
"Many hands make light work, but it also means that we're all just incredibly disorganised. The decision-making process is sort of ridiculous when you are dealing with so many people."
Even conducting the Architecture in Helsinki orchestra, with its bounty of instruments, has to be done carefully. "You've got to be very delicate with what you do. It definitely calls for a bit more patience than you would have with a normal guitar band. At the same time, you definitely want things to have a kind of miniature epic sound to them. When you have eight people playing on a track, the amount of information being crammed into the music is pretty intense."
At the beginning, though, it was just Bird, and decisions were a whole lot easier to make. When he first got hooked on music, growing up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, it was a bunch of indie classics which reached out to him. The teenager's hockey coach gave him some mix tapes, and hearing Pavement and The Pixies made Bird go "wow".
A teenage fascination with funky grunge led to a spell in a school band called The Pixel Mittens before the bright lights of Melbourne seduced him. There, with former Mittens Jamie Mildren and Sam Perry, Bird began to find a groove that was a lot more interesting than sounding like Primus. He also began to find other band members.
"I didn't set out to have eight people in the band. It really was a natural progression. It just happened like that. We'd play a gig or do some recording and we'd go 'what if we had some brass?' and then we had an extra person in the band. When we recorded Fingers Crossed, we were very happy with the way it had gone so it seemed natural to keep going with eight people. We really hadn't played live with eight people before, but we can't do it any other way now."
While the economics of keeping an eight-strong group on the road must be daunting, Bird prefers to be positive about the fact that the band can find audiences wherever they go. "I really don't know how bands did it 20 years ago. We can go to towns where we've never been before and people will come out to see us play. That blows my mind."
He puts it all down to the internet. "People may bitch about how the internet facilitates music piracy, and in some ways it does hurt independent artists, but so many people have access to indie music now that didn't have before.
"When I was 17, there was one record shop in Dobbins, which was 30 kilometres away, and that was it as far as hearing new music. The internet means people can hear bands like us and come to our show if they like what they hear. That can only be a good thing."
Architecture in Helsinki play Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin next Friday
