Places Like This Blog

If you're leaping off the edge of the world.

2007-09-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've hit on one theme a few times throughout the writing of this blog, but I'm beginning to come to a little bit of a conclusion about this record. Instead of being a record that pushes boundaries in the pursuit of presenting an altogether different theme, PLT is a record that pushes some boundaries, but largely in an effort to find out what boundaries are, why we have them, and to figure out how far we should push them. This pursuit is occurring not just at a lyrical level or musical level, but all over and in different ways.

On a vocal level, Cam tends to exaggerate his already idiosyncratic voice and pushes it into gravelly territory. It's a test of the limits of what we consider singing. Even more than that, the album is peppered with tribal chants - ay ay ay woot woots and boom dadadadas. What are the boundaries of melody in Western culture? They serve as a nice counterpoint to Cam's singing as I think that people largely consider his vocals on this album to be irritating and not very musical, whereas the chants are catchy and welcome on most songs despite the fact that they are less rooted in our notions of song than the foundation of Cam's work. As a result, we start to see a firmer delineation of what makes sound equal to song in our culture.

Musically, AiH push this album past different boundaries, too. They rely much more heavily on synthesizers, drum machines, and electronics in general on PLT and I think that serves as a test. AiH sounded much more organic on their last album. I'm not trying to imply that there were no keyboards, synths, drum machines, etc. on the last album, but they were used less severely and openly. "Red Turned White" is an extension of the thought behind "Frenchy I'm Faking" from the last album. It pushes the synths to the forefront and harshens the rhythms and sharpens everything. Is it still enjoyable? Is it still a likeable song? I think so, but that's the test. Is there a boundary that we have crossed? Moreover, the electronics aren't just present to a higher degree in rhythmic structures and melodies, but in creating new sounds that test the same border between sound and music. "Red Turned White" features bottle rocket sound effects, lazers and other foley effects folded into the mix that is the driving backbone of the song. "Hold Music" has a similar breakdown just after the two minute mark. Are these sound effects music just because they exist in the song and make up part of its form?

AiH even look at the question from a lyrical perspective. I already talked about "Heart it Races" in depth, but there are similar moments throughout the album. One of the most poignant comes at the end of "Red Turned White" when the statement is made that "you've got the wrong idea if you're leaping off the edge of the world". They are figuring life out and wisely state that the best way to find your limitations and boundaries is not to greatly overreach them, but to push up to their edges and see if you can expand them. As much as we would like to be able to take great steps the world doesn't work in that way. We build on old work and move forward incrementally. Boundaries can't be removed, but they can be moved.

In a sense, AiH prove their thesis by trying to take an enormous step. The album isn't a failure, but it certainly isn't an unqualified success.

Fuck it. I gotta dance.

2007-09-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know when the switch flipped, but I remember a time when I specifically did not want to dance. It was embarassing to be in middle school. Not only was I white and uncoordinated, I didn't like any "dance" music. "Dance" music in my middle school was pretty much confined to the most popular rap and r & b at the moment, ie. a lot of TLC and Tupac. I would probably be much more popular at my middle school dances now. I like Tupac. I like TLC. And I definitely like making fun of Left Eye's tragic death because my heart is cold and dark.

I could point to the night I saw Daft Punk live at Coachella as a turning point. Certainly that opened up a new world to me. I had pretty much dismissed any music made with a synth up until that point. I know I threw it down on the dance floor that night, too. However, I liked dancing before that night. Matty and I had even tried to throw an indie dance party at the end of our college careers.

Maybe the turn comes at a certain age. Maybe we finally find a place where we are comfortable enough to remove our inhibitions and give in to rhythm (or arhythm as the case may be) and sound. At any rate, "Debbie" from the AiH album is an absolute banger. When that song comes on, it is ON. In fact, I find that song so compelling on a purely I-Want-To-Dance-To-This level that I can't even judge it objectively. I mean, come on. That horn line is the jazz. The way the drums anticipate the thunder they are about rain with a few teasing, anticipatory kick snares. The fatness of that bassline. That bassline is bigger than Al Roker pre-surgery and way hotter than Al Roker post-surgery.

Moral of the story: shut off your brain and bust out your worst dance moves for "Debbie".

What does it mean to be an original artist?

2007-09-13T00:52:00.000-07:00

What kind of a lame question is this to ask? The lamest. It's possible that this is the least interesting question to ask anyone who is interested in music. Nonetheless, I listen to AiH and it is very obvious they are originals. PLT is an album in which the sources and influences are readily apparent. Yeah, I can hear the Talking Heads and B-52s loudly. AiH walk into this album flecked with bits of paint - golds, dark greens, luminescent oranges, glittering purples - and they have masks on and they've sewn tails to their trousers. By all accounts we shouldn't recognize them at all. It's not the same band that walked out of In Case We Die, at least not the way we remember them. Yet, from the first note of PLT I know that it's AiH. I can see past the paint. It flakes off anyway. So why are the influences so recognizable when the artist is still so present and dominating?

I think being an original artist is not so much a product of having a unique voice (because who doesn't have a unique voice really?), it is being able to express yourself clearly. Every voice is unique to a certain extent, but we all have similar fears, interests, passions, and lives when it comes right down to it. How unrelatable is even the most unrelatable human life that you can imagine? If you are picturing an Amazonian tribe obscured from the rest of the world and then forced to terraform Mars alone, plus they have a third arm coming out of their bellybutton and a double serving of genitals, they are still not that different from you (specifically you, Bono. Secret's out, bitch.). They still know fear and tribulation and still have the vague sense of life that you possess. They probably think about consciousness and wonder if other consciousnesses are out there. Being an original is about expressing yourself clearly, and I do mean "yourself," the sentient collection of tics and mannerisms. You are speaking without any condensation on your vocal cords. The words are clear and the meanings are appropriate to your vision. We're talking about a pure expression of form and in that respect, it's neither susceptible to judgments of quality nor affected by its relation to another expresser.

If you are a little lost, that's okay. I am, too. Probably because I'm not that great an expresser and am susceptible to quality judgments like bad. The bedrock of this argument is just that an original artisit is always recognizable because of his or her ability to express identity despite numerous confounding elements. If that doesn't strike you as powerful, you were not meant to appreciate art.

Dr. Dog and Heart it Races

2007-09-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a cover of "Heart it Races" (HIR) that Dr. Dog released. Juxtaposing the AiH version and the Dr. Dog version reveals some interesting things about this song. I think that HIR is darker in nature than AiH would lead us to believe. Sure, they're playing congas and chanting nonsense, but the lyrics tell a different story. This is a noir take on life-affirming activities.

"And we're slow to acknowledge the knots in our laces/Heart it races." If I've learned anything from people on television or in movies who have had near death experiences, it's that they immediately heap attention on the little things in life. Aren't laces amazing? Do we take any time to appreciate the complicated history of laces in our everyday lives? Who invented them? Why were they invented? How long did it take? Who was the first person to put them in shoes? These are all really stupid questions that aren't worth thinking about unless you are in a mood to contemplate what your place in history is and what contributions you have made to the world. However, it certainly is interesting to look at this lyric in the context of AiH's reputation for childlike abandon and wide-eyed twee sensibilities. Children are often the people (besides those near-deathers) who get lost in dreamy reflections about things like shoelaces. Yet, AiH chooses to highlight the fact that we are "slow to acknowledge" these miniscule pieces of our lives even though they can lead to moments of excitement ("heart it races"). Even these children-at-heart find it difficult to live in the moment all the time. Certainly a surprising turn on an album that seems to glorify living in the moment at every other turn.

Maybe the reality of the situation is that this song serves as more of a mission statement than anything else for the rest of the album. "And we go back to where we moved out to the places". Revisiting our past, that's a tearjerker. You can wander around in that stuff for days. Or you can use it as a stepping stone to more visceral pleasures as AiH. "I bought it in a can and stirred it with my finger singing/boom dah dah dah dah/boom dah dah dah/threw it out the window." Hey, why not? You get the tactile pleasure of stirring up a can of something with your digits and then you get to throw it out the window? I'll sign up for that. It sounds fun. How far can we take it? "I sold it to a man and threw him out the window/made his wife a widow." What the fuck?! You did what?!

AiH started small with the contemplation of some shoelaces, a mild reminder that we should take a little time to appreciate the little things, but they let things get out of hand in their lawless environment. We thought they just wanted to indulge in some harmless shouts every once in a while, but pretty soon they were shouting over everything, grinding their voices, participating in shameless instrumental breakdowns and now this guy is dead?! It's a chaotic album. Sometimes AiH lose their grip on reality and push someone out a window. Is it worth it though? Should this man die so that we can free ourselves from rules if only for a little while, so that we can truly appreciate life for a few fleeting seconds?

Pushing to the margins

2007-09-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

Normally one would expect a band to head in one direction from a previous album. They get interested in a certain aspect of their sound and want to expand upon it. It takes a while to realize that PLT pushes towards two very distinct sound explorations of sound. Readily apparent is the fact that AiH has gotten very interested in electronic sounds. They push electronic drums to the forefront and expand their use of synths and keyboards on this album. What is not immediately obvious is that the band has also elevated the use of another part of their arsenal.

PLT features a lot more acoustic guitar and hand percussion than AiH's prior releases. Songs like "Heart it Races," "Like it or Not," "Lazy," and "Nothing's Wrong" all feature these two elements and these are some of the strongest tracks on the album. Now, AiH could have a couple of reasons for expanding this part of their sound. In some ways, it could be viewed as a method of grounding forward-thinking compositions in a folk tradition. They are already taking a lot of chances with their instrumentation (the aforementioned synths, keys and drum pads), but giving the songs an acoustic guitar base lends them authenticity and familiarity. However, I think another (possibly more interesting) interpretation is that they make these choices as a nod to the already primal sounding record. What sound is more animalistic than beating on a drum with one's hand? They are literally beating sound into existence. If this is an album about noise, then they are adding basic textures on the bottom. It's a coat of primer, but sloppily applied.

Bust it open like a pinata.

2007-09-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

"Feather in a Baseball Cap" was pretty high up on my list of worst songs on the album for quite some time. That's really saying something because there are only two songs on the album that I don't like - "Feather" and "Underwater". However, I'm starting to come around to "Feather".

The thing about this song is that it is really not about the majority of itself. I know that was a really great sentence filled with meaning and lexicographical prowess, but what I'm trying to get across is that this song exists only for the breakdown about three quarters of the way through. The song focuses on a repeated rhythmic figure with occasional ambient interludes. It is boring. Seriously. But! The song is building tension. You get angry that it is so simplistic and slightly dissonant. When they crack in at 1:25, there is a sense of instant gratification. It's their most controlled freak out on the whole album. There is reason to it and even a little structure. If anything, "Feather" is the AiH version of a minimalist composition. They retain their innate sense of self, but they tackle a new idea.

Honestly, it's still not a very interesting song, but I can at least respect it as a failed experiment.

PS. For anyone reading this blog that has no idea what this music sounds like, I want to just point you to an incredible website: The Hype Machine (www.hypem.com). It is an mp3 blog aggregator. Just search for Architecture in Helsinki and it will pull up an songs that have been posted on mp3 blogs. You should still support the band by buying the album, but if you want a taste of their stuff you can start there.

Ska

2007-09-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

I spotted something interesting in PLT today. The horn lines in both "Hold Music" and "Debbie" owe an awful lot to third wave ska horn work. Maybe that doesn't mean much to you guys, but it means a lot to me.

I know that ska music is kind of like Dr. Who in that it can die and then regenerate into something that looks a little different, but is actually the same. I know that the last time ska came back, it had been sired by alternative rock/punk to a certain extent. I know that people always seem to hate ska for some reason that I can't understand because I think it's the fucking bee's knees in all its incarnations. Maybe it's because ska is seen by many as a limited art form. I'm consistently surprised to hear that argument, but it occurs with some frequency. I actually think that ska is extremely varied and interesting. People bring different things to it and each musician has their own flavor.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel like ska is a microcosmic representation of music in general. When we are unfamiliar with a type of music it tends to all sound the same, right? A few years ago, if you had played me two techno artists at opposite ends of the spectrum I probably would have thought that they sounded the same. But that's exactly the beauty of music!! There is so much to music. There are so many facets to a song and so many things that are common to a genre and a subgenre and a sub-subgenre. We learn the major features and then we can put those things on auto-pilot while we concentrate on minutiae. We categorize things to make them easier to learn about. You have to start at the broadest level and work your way in.

Follow me down this trail for a moment. I'll leave you breadcrumbs in case you get hungry, fatty. I was taking a course that my boss was teaching last spring in which we read current scientific literature in the field of neurobiology. We read some articles about how they are actually starting to make prosthetic arms that they can attach to your brain. After extensive training, you can begin to control the prosthetic arm using only your brain. Besides the fact that this is incredibly cool, it has some applicability to our current discussion. The arm requires extensive training to acquire even minimal functionality. Despite the fact that this is a complicated system, it gives some possible insight into the way the brain works. Slowly over time it can adjust itself, set up new pathways. Learning isn't an instantaneous process. It's about training your brain and reinforcing and reevaluating concepts continuously. You can't learn everything about music in a single moment, a single listen, a single album and on and on. You can only glean small bits all the time and build a knowledge base from all those little bits. Eventually you can make subtle distinctions and meaningful judgements. In this way, music is like every other fucking thing in the whole world. We spend our lives following paths and building areas of comfort, areas filled with the intricacies and ornamentation of years of construction. There are other areas that we are unschooled in and we have to start at pretty basic levels to make any progress at all.

Nonetheless, music continues to refresh itself and make itself more difficult by endlessly recombining in unexpected ways. Even though "Hold Music" uses ska as a reference point, it isn't a ska song. I can't really describe what type of song it is, but it fuses elements of synthpop, tribal rhythms, and funk into something different. Songs like "Hold Music" help to push the field of music in new directions the same way that everything in the world gets pushed: incrementally. Songs don't shift paradigms (even the songs that we really, really, really think do), years do.

Shared History

2007-09-05T01:21:00.000-07:00

A very important friend of mine is leaving LA today and that has given me something to think about. We've known each other for some time now and I can't say that we were somehow preternaturally predisposed to be very good friends. In fact, when I knew him in college we were friends, but not particularly tight. He had even faded from my radar a little bit by the end of college because he had drifted into different circles and pursuits. When I arrived in LA, he was one of three people that I knew and he let me crash on his couch for a month while I tried to figure out my life and living situation. Over the course of two years we became writing partners, roommates, and best friends. We discovered that we had the same type when it came to women, a fact that made us terrible wingmen for one another. We bonded over music and comedy and absurd shows like Dr. Who and Northern Exposure. I learned that he enjoys juicing things and has crazy dreams when he is on a wormwood cleanse. I found out that after a while we didn't always need to say things, they were just known.

There are a million other things that I could say (reasons to miss him, reasons to make fun of him, etc.), but the idea that I keep coming back to is shared history. I have a new roomate, a dude that I've also known since college, and I am excited to get to know him better. I'm also apprehensive about the whole idea of having someone new in my apartment. For all that I know, I might actually have more in common with the new guy. We might wind up being better roomates in the long run. Who knows? The one that we don't have, though, is shared history. This is something that we can all relate to, too. We've all moved away from our friends at some point or another. There are other friends out there and they might even be better suited to us, but we want the ones that belong to our past, to our history.

This notion ties in with something that I talked about a short time ago on the blog: growing with a band as opposed to listening to the finished product of that growth. We instinctively want to be with the people who have watched our growth. We have a keen desire to be near those people that we understand because we watched their development. We don't know everything yet, but we know enough to discover the minutiae, the tiny things that ornament their lives and sometimes even guide them at a level subtle enough that it is almost imperceptible. In a way, listening to music is a form of socialization. We are learning to interact with music in the same way that we interact with other people.

However, a new record by an established band is always a tricky venture because we have a shared history with that band. I would bet that PLT would have scored more highly in critic's circles if it was AiH's first album. The fact that we are familiar with them already makes it more difficult to take their work at face value. We are almost forced to compare them to their prior work, which is unfair because In Case We Die is so fucking good. There is nostalgia attached to that album because it exists in our history. How can we compare something that isn't part of our history with something that is? The energy associated with overcoming that kind of a barrier is astronomical. It can be done, but it takes something really spectacular. We can meet new friends. It would take an extremely special person to make a huge impact right away, though. How do we keep getting older and still feel interested in life? How can we continue to beat these unbeatable odds all the time? We have to look for new experiences and untouched paths. We save energy wherever we can and make the effort when it counts. That's why there will always be new bands, new friends, new jobs, new shows, new ideas, new beliefs, new loves, new facets to old relationships even, and a veritable treasure trove of other news. We couldn't possibly sustain the weight of the old all the time, but we can look back on the old things and our shared history with them and often that's good enough.

Challenges

2007-09-04T01:02:00.000-07:00

My friend Matty hit on an important point in the comments to yesterday's post. He brings up the idea that the songs on PLT are significantly less subtle in their composition and actually a bit jarring to listen to. I actually completely agree. Having spent a great deal of time with this album already, it has become apparent that this isn't really the kind of album that offers large returns on repeated listenings. In fact, I think that the major problem with the album is exactly that it is too clear on the very first listen. Most of the reviews that I've read point to this problem in a roundabout way. The constant thread seems to be that PLT is filled with abrasive noises and annoying sounds. However, critics are too focused on the symptoms and not the cause. The production on PLT is a part of the cause. Everything is in the foreground. The landscape of this album is 2-D. We can't see how far away the hills and valleys are because they are flattened amidst everything else. Everything is out in the open, but nothing is holding it up. It's like those weird boxes in Mario 3 that are apparently nailed to something in midair despite the fact that there is nothing for them to be nailed to. It isn't that the sounds are necessarily too abrasive or annoying, it's that they're all right there from the start. There aren't any background voices snaking their way through the songs.

While I feel that the above is kind of a damning criticism of PLT, it also brings another question to mind. How deeply do we need to be able to dig into an album and how much has to be there to make it a great album? Part of being a huge music fan is the ability to listen to an album critically. This skill is both a blessing and a curse. Certainly we are highly trained and very discerning, but we start to lose the ability to enjoy music that doesn't require much work on our part. Music is exercise for our brains. Just as a strong reader would be bored by reading children's books, or a seasoned weight-lifter would be bored lifting ten pound dumbells, we get bored listening to simple albums. Obviously we're talking about a sliding scale. PLT isn't exactly closest to the simple side of the scale, but it's also not that close to the difficult end.

Furthermore, a great album at one stage in your development might not necessarily qualify as a great album later. I remember having a pretty deep affinity for the first Collective Soul album back in my early days of music listening, but I can't really imagine finding it interesting for any reason other than nostalgia now. However, there are certain albums that continue to offer new things throughout our lives. These are obviously the greatest albums. How can an album be structured so as to be significant to different skill groups? Moreover, what are the pieces that we can recognize and judge at these various levels? What constitutes the surface of music and what is found in the deeper levels? Are we limited as listeners to certain skill levels? Can anyone reach the finest levels of appreciation (even though that sounds totally pretentious) or are certain people unable to move further? It seem unlikely that intelligence plays a huge role in defining our appreciation. I've known smart people with very unrefined taste and stupid people with great taste. Are we limited only by how hard we work and challenge ourselves?

My beloved is mine and I am my beloved's.

2007-09-03T00:53:00.000-07:00

I went to the wedding of two friends today and it was unusually interesting. One of them was raised in the Hindu faith and the other was brought up as a Jew. They opted to have both ceremonies - the Hindu ceremony, then the Jewish ceremony. It was a little bit odd, but ultimately a really beautiful day. And even though the two ceremonies were wildly different, one thing was affirmed by both - these were two people perfectly suited to one another and deeply in love. They shirked off any discomfort with the unfamiliar to make the other one happy.

This marriage of methods and backgrounds in the faith of a greater cause is similar to a lot of the Architecture in Helsinki album. Moreso than their last effort, Places Like This tends to rely on sounds and rhythms that feel Australian (AiH's nationality) in the service of pop songs. "Heart it Races" is a seamless blend of tribal drumming and chanting with pop melodies, experimental keyboard doodling, and Carribean influence. "Hold Music" is the B-52s with aboriginal hey ya ya's. Like it or Not's Wa Wa Wa chorus is tinged with a carefree Australian goofiness. However, this marriage is built to last. The influence is integrated well and never feels forced. It is a natural progression from their last album and a welcome change.

Underwater, The Journey pt. 2

2007-09-02T00:47:00.000-07:00

The strong contender for worst song on the album is "Underwater." Essentially, this song is an exercise in laziness. The song lacks any strong vocal hook, which is odd for AiH, and lacks handles of any sort. What I mean is that there is no place to grab onto this song. It's all bubbly sound effects and muttered percussion. The song is over-produced and underthought. So far, I have found no route by which to enjoy "Underwater," and it basically kills the momentum of the album.

But maybe it's more than just a bad egg. There is a possibility that "Underwater" is indicative of a more general fault of this album: complacency. AiH's previous album, "In Case We Die," contained tracks like Neverevereverdid, Wishbone, and In Case We Die (Parts 1-4) that all built from simple ideas into something much bigger. There was an expert touch to the dynamics and the smart arrangements took advantage of the multiple sections to explore different emotions. Places Like This fails to capitalize on the same things. There are often still multiple sections to songs, but they explore a much more limited range of emotions and dynamics. "Underwater:" stagnates in its single dynamic state, but even stronger songs on the album tend to be limited. "Debbie" is strong and energetic and nothing else. What if it had offered more counterpoint in one section? Would that have drastically improved the song as a whole? What kinds of choices can musicians make to escalate the impact of their songs? Is it fair to call an album like this one complacent despite the fact that it is still interesting and engaging much of the time (in addition to being loud and raucous)?

The Journey

2007-08-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

In 1973, Bruce Springsteen released my favorite album of all-time. The record, "The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle" was seven songs comprising about 45 minutes of music. Do the math. The songs were long and winding with many distinct movements. Although the album received much critical acclaim, it was largely ignored in the mainstream and generally considered a commercial flop at the time. Springsteen went on to great success with his next album, 1975's "Born to Run," and he went out on tour in support of this album. This is where things start to pick up a little steam.

Springsteen played a show at Bryn Mawr on this tour and I happen to run across a few tracks from that show several years ago. His performance of the song "NYC Serenade" was a revelation for me. The song was already an emotionally wrenching songwriting juggernaut in the studio (at least to me at that time in my life), but the live version was something more. It took me to the heights and it took me to the lows. It was the first time that I was ever conscious of being manipulated by a truly masterful live performer. It stayed true to the studio version almost not at all, instead choosing to toy with the idea of entropy and order. The song starts with the rattle and clatter of instruments formed only around a very general idea and finally pulls everything together for a tightly wound verse. After about ten minutes, Bruce and the band slip out of the cloak of the song into something new. They bring it down to a whisper. The drummer murmurs crisp rimshots amidst the soft sussurrations of the cymbals as the bassist rumbles beneath the surface, coming up to breath only occasionally. Bruce begins to ad lib lyrics. "You're just some crazy runner runnin' crazy in the streets." It's about the absurdity of youth, the realness that seems to be around every corner just out of reach, and even though we can dream of our life on the streets that realness is also a myth. The band slowly increases the intensity. The piano is there. "Maybe we could slip away." This becomes a mantra. It rolls through us and picks up meaning and loses meaning all at the same time. We repeat it and it becomes the solution. We repeat it and it becomes only words and sounds. And then Bruce asks for it to stop. Each plaintive cry is punctuated by sharp, high-pitched piano blasts, but there is too much momentum now. The words and their meanings and their sounds are all jumbled together and finally, finally!!, everything is released and the band fills everything. Every space.

Architecture in Helsinki are not so different. They have the same commitment to lofty ideals of childish escapism, but this album lacks the journey. We never get taken there. It's filled with admirable beats and grooves, sugary melodies and beautiful songwriting. However, it feels stagnant in comparison to this Springsteen performance. It never plumbs the depths and explores the solitude and it certainly lacks the grand build up of "NYC Serenade." Frankly, that's important and it shows a certain amount of weakness and ineptitude on the part of AiH. Not that everything should sound like a Springsteen song, but if there is a fatal flaw to this album, then it's the failure to grab us at a basic emotional level and shake us apart. To me, that's what good art does. It fills us up and empties us out. It's a journey and we find new things on the side of the road everytime we take it.

Kellie v. Cameron

2007-08-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

While the first AiH album felt as if Kellie and Cameron (the two lead vocalists) were essentially a team that traded off on melodies and often worked together, Places Like This strikes a very different dynamic between the two vocalists. Kellie retains the focus on melody and sweetly sung parts. Cameron, on the other hand, takes on the role of antagonist. More than anything else on the album, he serves as the distorter, the noisemaker, playfully pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to singing. Frankly, he often sounds like an impudent child throwing a tantrum. Believe it or not, I don't mean that in a bad way.

Cameron engages us in another version of childishness on this album. If their previous album, In Case We Die, was upon seeming twee or even fey, then this album is about acting out. The sounds are bigger and louder and just generally more. This notion extends to Cameron who pushes the cuteness of his voice to breaking point. He still sounds like someone who is still experiencing the world for the first time, but his singing holds a note of youthful malevolence. This is a perfectly fair direction for AiH to head in. In fact, I believe popular culture deems it the terrible twos. Where does that leave Kellie though?

Well, every two year-old needs a chaperone. Could we really handle an album with a bunch of two year-olds blaring at us? Probably not. Someone has to bring a certain amount of adult responsibility to the effort or it would descend into complete anarchy. Kellie serves as a stabilizing force throughout this record and that becomes important for one major reason. Remember when we talked about growth and being able to see an artist grow? Without Kellie's influence on this album, it would likely seem the effort of a completely different band. The fact that Kellie maintains most of her character from In Case We Die helps to center the album as a step and not a jump. Her faithfulness is reassuring and she acts as a voucher for this new band.

It's a Furious Funk

2007-08-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

Today, I drove through Westwood with my windows down blaring AiH's "Debbie." There's a singular pleasure in knowing that you have a song that should be played in exactly this manner. It extends beyond the song to a feeling inside you. It takes a certain level of confidence to be that asshole with his windows down, trying to exert the force of a song on everyone within earshot. People have been doing it for years, too. Americans have blasted everything from Hendrix to Zeppelin to Public Enemy to Metallica. Concurrently, movies have shown us that European thugs only blast techno and usually with an evil to volume ratio of 1 to 1. Regardless, it showcases the fact that music has the ability to give us strength and confidence and when you think about it, that's incredible.

I wouldn't drive around with my window down shouting at people on the street normally. However, when the deep backbeat and thickly funky horn part of "Debbie" kick in, it's on. The volume goes up. I sing along loudly. I play a pretty mean steering wheel drum beat. And I don't feel like a douchebag at all, despite the fact that I clearly look like one. I am conscious of my flaws, yet unconcerned. Music has the ability to completely divide the id and the ego if only for a brief moment and that's powerful.

Reconciling Our Interests With Our Realities

2007-08-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

Just days after the release of Architecture in Helsinki's latest album there was a virtual flood of criticism available for the record. I don't mean criticism in the sense that it was universally panned, rather a critical mass of writing on the record available on the internet. This writing is certainly in addition to a wealth of pre-reviews, track reviews, news blurbs, interviews, live reviews, blog posts and all other manner of exposure for the band. Check Metacritic for confirmation. Yet, if I were to take a random sample of people out on the street here in Los Angeles, I suspect that only a small fraction of those people would even recognize the name of the band. What is frustrating, however, is that I find it difficult to reconcile the role of criticism and coverage with my desire to listen to a band.

Let me refine this argument. As someone who is more than just a casual fan of music, I dedicate a lot of time to researching new bands, listening to new albums, etc. However, there is a central question that someone with my interest faces: am I looking for the best music or am I looking for the music below other people's radar? It's possible that these two things are the same, but it's also possible that they are not. I would posit that the majority viewpoint of people in my position favors finding great music under the radar. That's who we are! You don't start looking for a band like Architecture in Helsinki unless a part of you is dissatisfied by the choices available through mass media outlets. Furthermore, you find some solace in rooting for the underdog and in being a part of a small community doing the same.

Here's the problem, though. (Or rather the multiple subtle problems that have emerged recently). There has been a critical backlash in the past few years against the outright rejection of popular music and pop music, which are two different things. This makes sense by and large. If we reject things that are popular purely because they are popular or because they have a pop sound, then we reject some of the most stunning music ever created on a technicality. Take Motown for example. I don't think that you will find a single serious fan of music that would argue against the excellence of Motown, a label nearly as infallible as it was popular in certain parts of the sixties. And take Annie as an example of someone with a pop sound that doesn't deserve outright rejection. She's wonderful despite the fact that she has a very pop edge to her music. But how can we reconcile the fact that the critical leviathans that we've erected have betrayed us? Websites like Pitchfork and Stylus rose to prominence on the promise that they would protect us from popular music and give us guidance in our chosen world of music. What does it mean when Pitchfork places Justin Timberlake at the top of its year-end singles list? I'm not trying to overdramatize what is essentially a meaningless list in a world with real problems. The song might even be good. That's not really the point, though.

In fact, the problem is even more subtle than a simple betrayal. The internet has made it easy for subcultures to rally together and find critical mass, but for a lot of these subcultures, the whole point was not to have critical mass. The advent of Pitchfork meant that we had a place where a small group of dedicated music fans could gather to get advice on how to proceed in the underground. People caught on. More people showed up and suddenly Pitchfork wasn't a guiding hand so much as a tastemaking juggernaut. A place that used to be a haven for wonderful, unpopular music became a popular hang out. By becoming successful, Pitchfork also became antithetical to its own cause. (Primarily this is conjecture. How could I possibly know what the actual goals of Pitchfork are? Are there any goals other than to be successful? How do they define success?) Let's not forget that this kind of thing happens all the time. Rolling Stone didn't used to be a piece of shit publication. There was a time when it was progressive and interested in undercurrents of society as they were happening, not two years after they were over. Hell, this line of reasoning even carries over to bands themselves. How many people out there have sworn undying allegiance to an underground band, told all their friends about the band and then dismissed the band as soon as they reached some moderate level of success (probably for selling out)? I swear, I do this, like, weekly.

So how do I reconcile these problems? Can I keep falling from one subculture to the next until I reach some bottom where the only member of the movement is me? Groucho Marx certainly was prescient when he said, "I wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have me as a member." Is it really that big a deal that a band is flaunted on Pitchfork? I'll still only have two or three friends who have even heard of them. What is the appeal of these exclusive groups to which we often subjugate ourselves? Can there ever really be something meaningful that survives success or is success the sign that something has lost relevance?

How can I waste time like this?

2007-08-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

It never struck me until today how necessary a good soundtrack is for wasting time. In the midst of a good procrastination session, you feel anchored in your time-wasting by the constantly changing musical accompaniment. In essence, I waste time in order to be with music. One song might lead me to a different album by a simple spark, a drawn parallel, an autobiographical connection, etc. and I can spend a wonderful afternoon just bouncing around iTunes and zoning out. This pastime, however, is much more difficult when one is limited to a single record, just thirty minutes of music. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the album, but I get enough chances to listen to it - I don't really need or have the desire to spend a whole afternoon with just one short album. I wish that I could say that limiting myself to this record has made me more productive, but I find other ways to pass the time without accomplishing anything. At any rate, my apartment is busy enough with changes right now to keep me from larger pursuits, but I kind of miss the smaller pursuits.

Like It or Not

2007-08-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

Like it or Not is the early favorite off of this pretty fantastic album. It's a simple track with a deeply catchy melody, but it takes me back to my first experience with Architecture in Helsinki. I first found out about AiH in early 2005 when their Pitchfork review came out (more on this website later). For a variety of reasons that I will discuss in a future post, I was taking more chances on music and decided to download their new record. After the strange, though fantastic, first track, I wasn't sure what to expect from the rest of the album, which is a feeling that I would like to have more often with music. It's too easy to feel overexposed to an album before the album has even come out these days and I made an active effort to limit my exposure to this album prior to its release. However, there is something inherently different about hearing a new album by an old favorite as opposed to a new album from a new group. At the very least, it is more difficult to completely shock your audience with your new material. Fundamentally, the audience expects something vaguely similar to what they found on the previous album. Yet you can't veer off too far in either direction. If the new stuff is too similar, then the audience will consider you a one-trick pony. If you push too far in your experimentation, then the audience will consider your new album too disparate and disconnected from your prior work. The audience wants to see you grow, but they don't want to miss the growing. They want to take the journey with you. This is largely the same reason that it's harder to get people to adopt full grown dogs from animal shelters. Things are more precious to us when we can watch their trajectory. I think it has to do with our desire to understand how things work, a process made more difficult when chunks of the development are obfuscated.

For me, Like it or Not helps to bridge the gap between this album and the last album. It reminds me of the poppy sing-along It'5 from the first record, but somehow features a greater reliance on spastically delivered vocals. If their last album was about constantly renewing musical ideas and rapid changes, then this album is about settling into grooves and ornamenting them to a greater extent with noises and sounds, fracturing and distorting musical ideas. Like it or Not represents that growth process in an easily apparent way. It marks the transition from their salad days to their, um, salad with dressing days? It's the same band, but they are interested in different sounds and styles. It doesn't make them less fun or more grown up (two things that might be synonymous), merely different. From a pure enjoyment perspective though, how can you not like this song? It's sweet and happy and beautiful and retains that childlike presence of mind and joy for which AiH are famous.

Newness in the Old

2007-08-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about music is that ocassionally, in rare circumstances, you will find something new in music that you have grown accustommed to. Obviously I haven't really spent enough time with Places Like This yet to really be at that point, but I have had a few occurrences in my daily life that have mirrored this situation. We recently got new neighbors in our apartment complex. Well, sort of new. One of them is a neighbor we've had for a little more than a year while the other one is new. Yet, we have recently become tight friends with them. There is a lot to be said for the new dynamic we have struck with them. Now we often spend Friday nights together watching movies, having dinner and drinking. To a certain extent we are recapturing the social dynamic of college neighbors and that's exciting.

However, applying this newfound dynamic to music is even more interesting. What is it about music that keeps on giving back to us? Doesn't it seem odd that you can spend many hours with a single song and not notice all of its parts? How is it that certain underlying harmonies or melodies or beats or random noises can escape conscious recognition for (sometimes) years? Why did it take me months to figure out that the bass entrances in Led Zeppelin's Tangerine and Ted Leo's Timorous Me make their respective songs. They are perfectly timed and flawlessly executed, yet there was a time when I didn't even know that they factored into the music at all. Lkewise, there are probably all sorts of intricately executed moments on the new AiH album that I have yet to discover and I suspect that once I know about them, I will wonder how I ever listened to these songs without the benefit of these moments.

Initial Thoughts

2007-08-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

My first impression of Places Like This is that there is a raucous party tone to this album that, while present on their prior albums, is forefronted on this effort to a much greater extent. This notion extends beyond greater reliance on distorted, screamed vocals and uptempo electro funk to a richer concept. Architecture in Helsinki have created a cult of noisology. Bells, whistles, bleeps, bloops, shouts, horns, bubbles, fireworks, etc. To a certain extent, this is an album about noise. Criticism can obviously be levied at this concept. It's easy to think of these noises as distractions that an overzealous band couldn't bring themselves to cut, but I think that criticism misses the point. Even if it were true, it doesn't really matter. This is an album about being in love with noises! AiH is often accused of being saccharine and childlike, but it is that attitude that lets them get away with loving noises and sounds. That's as pure as music gets and it's a shame that we don't all take a little time to indulge in unfettered sound once in awhile.

Can you make the argument that AiH's devotion to sound occasionally damages the beautiful pop songs underlying everything? Definitely. Some shit gets fucked up. It happens. However, it's hard to fault them for that. They let their boundless imagination run wild and not everything works. Thats just how experimentation is, though. It would be disappointing to hear an album by AiH in which they have stopped trying new things, stopped loving noises. I'd rather they let things pick up speed and rattle out of control than pull over to the side of the road and check the tires. It's more fun that way.

The Rules and the Reason

2007-08-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure who to blame. Maybe the internet has made music too available. How much can we really value an album that we got for free or for a few dollars? Do we need the economic burden to incentivize listening to a record? Is it just that we're finally in that enviable position of being turned loose in an ice cream shop and being limited only by what we can fit into our stomachs?

Maybe it isn't the fault of the internet. Perhaps the iPod is to blame. It's so easy to switch to anything that pops into my head. Why finish a new album, putting the effort into listening to something unfamiliar, when I can just as easily switch to my favorite Ted Leo album or whatever track I've been digging lately? There is something to be said for overcoming the initial energy barrier to listen to something else. CDs, cassettes and vinyl put us to the test. They forced our hand and made us question how badly we needed to hear something safe and easy.

Then again, don't I deserve some of the blame for not spending time with my music? It takes some work to be a music fan. I think being a fan of something implies that you have chosen to spend time thinking about something and putting work into it. I love music, but it was easier to hunker down with a single album for an expanded stretch of time in the early days of my love. I had fewer albums; music was less available; I didn't know about the millions of different sub-genres of music that required exploring (and frankly it was nice not to have to care about the difference between microhouse and french touch). However, these things have changed and the subtle nuances of music have become interesting and important to me. I want to explore all of the cracks and crevices of music in a wholly unrealistic timeframe and the cost is that I rarely spend more than a listen or two to a given album. Albums are not that simple though! At least not good ones. Often we don't notice the classics on the first few listens or even the first fifteen listens. I don't mean classics as in the culturally approved classics like Born to Run. I'm talking about The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Not that Born to Run isn't great, but the E Street Shuffle is one of my classics, my roots, an album that found me at the right time (after a little effort) and grew with me. Those albums almost never grab you right away because they are different. They have so much to unpack that on the first pass, all you can really do is look at them and wonder what to open first.

Thus, I am undertaking a project to completely unpack an album and devote my full attention to a piece of art for a reasonable amount of time. I have chosen Architecture in Helsinki's latest album, Places Like This, for a variety of reasons that I'm sure will be discussed in the coming weeks. First, I want to lay down some ground rules.

1. I will listen to Places Like This in its entirety everyday for the next month and write about it each day.

2. For the first week of this exercise, I will ONLY listen to Places Like This.

3. On subsequent weeks, I will be allowed to listen to other albums, but only after at least one listen to Places.

4. The posts can be about anything related to the album. This is meant to be an exercise about thinking as much as it is about listening to an album. It is a piece of art meant to stimulate dialogues and ideas. There is no reason to limit what that means.

5. You all should buy a copy of this album. Most of the posts will be sing alongs.