Having a spacious and loaded musical toybox is a good thing for a band, as Architecture in Helsinki definitely know. The Australian assemblage has a diverse range of identities and is able to appear at various times as a blippy dance-punk outfit, a marching band, an a cappella group, a children's musical troupe, or a psychedelic commune-- sometimes all within the confines of one three-minute song. This shapeshifting ability, and the attention span to match, can be dangerously volatile, though it was corralled impressively on 2005's delightfully manic In Case We Die. But having too many toys can also lead to nothing but chaos, the kind of messy room that ends up in severe punishment when Dad steps on a stray Lego...er, or so I've heard.
Unfortunately, Places Like This more resembles that messy room than the barely contained creativity of In Case We Die, which I guess makes me the angry Dad with the sore foot in this scenario. It's no joy to say that this third full-length from AiH often misses the mark; the band clearly has a surplus of ideas and energy, which is the opposite problem to the majority of indie mopesters churning out the same album over and over again. But whereas In Case We Die had at least a smidgen of restraint and pacing to keep the song-suites in some semblance of order, Places Like This hits the throttle like it can't wait to reach the end of the record, pushing the needle into the red a few too many times along the way.
It's a promising start, at least. The electro beats that start of "Red Turned White" are slowly joined by a succession of slick keyboards, and while the vocals are a bit on the strident side, there's a nice coda that actually breaks down rather than overwhelmingly layering on the effects. "Heart It Races" also finds AiH playing to their strengths, throwing the shrill-along lead vocals against Graceland-esque vocal basslines and tropical percussion, before cresting on a glittery keyboard wash. I can even buy into the Remain in Light shimmy that's the starting point of "Hold Music", and the B-52s-impression vocals, until the 2:00 mark, when the singer apparently takes a boomerang to the groin, and it all turns sour.
I have no illusions about In Case We Die not being a showcase of overly theatrical and twee vocalizations, but Places Like This takes, um, impassioned singing to a whole new level, that level being Muppets On Crack. It's a singing approach that mars the surprisingly convincing funk (complete with snazzy horn breaks) of "Debbie", while a chorus made up of wah-wah baby noises sinks the otherwise straightforward acoustic pep of "Like It or Not". They may all be errors borne of excess enthusiasm, but nonetheless they're stylistic choices unlikely to endear Architecture in Helsinki to anyone over the age of four.
Elsewhere, the band's unorthodox arrangements lead to dead-ends more than usual. While the mid-song detours may be AiH's signature, they remain a risky move, and Places Like This spotlights a couple moments where it backfires on the band. "Lazy (Lazy)" is remarkably and pleasingly subdued, until it launches into a disjointed mid-song break of pep-rally yelling and bashing from which the song's micro-groove never recovers. Meanwhile, "Feather in a Baseball Cap" can't muster up more than a weak, brief riff breakdown, and "Underwater" doesn't ever go beyond its somewhat flimsy aquatic concept.
The vocal relay race of "Nothing's Wrong" and the simple synth-pop of "Same Old Innocence" save some face at the end, but on a record that's barely a half-hour, it's not quite enough heft. It almost seems contrary to the Architecture in Helsinki aesthetic to ask them to slow down and stretch out, but the abbreviated runtime of Places Like This makes it seem as though they could have given their ideas more space to breathe, rather than piling them up like a stack of pancakes. As a wise man once said, possibly while peeling a Lego off the bottom of his foot, you don't have to play with all your goddamn toys at once, kid.
