In Case We Die by Architecture in Helsinki

2005, Bar/None Records, 13 tracks at 40 min.

You know what’s annoying? When people who are obviously past the age for being cute decide to act cute. Now, acting cute is fine and all if you’re, say, entertaining a group of children because T. Boggs the rent-a-clown was put on trial for pederasty charges; but if you’ve just gotten out of college and you’re acting as if the world is a Technicolor zoetrope of good times, then you’re a jackass. Clearly.

Now, people who like Architecture in Helsinki will say, “It’s just fun! Can’t you just have fun?” No, I can’t. I can’t have fun when it’s forced upon me. And therein lies the inherent problem of In Case We Die--it practically browbeats you into feeling happy. Not to say that’s it successful—though Architecture in Helsinki may be the Stalin of fun, ‘wacky’ music; they don’t have the same leverage as the mustached Soviet did. Why? Well their music sucks. That’s part of it.

“Do the Whirlwind” tries to be exotic and ‘worldly,’ but it sounds more like a Seasame Street block party. Now, that’d be fine if it was the only song of its ilk on the record, but the ENTIRE DISC sounds like a Tex-Avery-funded trumpet, handclap, and ‘zany’ stereophonic extravaganza.

For example, the track “It’5.” It’s particularly overblown in its ‘adorability,’ and I don’t mind whimsicality as long as it has the slightest trace of irony.

Ooo! Scary Monster Voice saying “danger stranger!”
GROW. UP.

The wispy vocal thing can be annoying as hell, especially since Architecture in Helsinki is not Lullatone (who know how to do the bated breath thing right, only further proving the superiority of Asians in everything ever). See the song “Tiny Paintings.” Oops, am I listening to an acoustic múm record? No, I’m listening to crappy indie pop by a group of Australians who don’t have REAL jobs and would rather make songs of unwarranted naïveté.

Oh, and did I mention it takes six to eight people to make this shit?
ARE.
YOU.
SERIOUS?

Now, you may be thinking, “But you can’t you just enjoy the twee fun? It’s just music after all!” And, yes, that’s probably so, but when it comes to an existential bastard such as myself, I simply can’t listen to this crap and think, “Oh, the world’s in a-okay shape,” because it’s not. You listen to Doris Day and you think the world is in okay shape, because she was singing in a time when some people actually believed that, but the general populace is a lot less idealistic today then they were fifty-years ago, because they’re more aware, and to have these twee douchebags pretending like everything is hunky dory in the twenty-first century is just dumb.

Belle and Sebastian don’t act cute; they act Scottish. of Montreal doesn’t act cute; they act as if they have serious psychosexual identity issues. Camera Obscura doesn’t act cute; they act as if they’re trying to escape the cuteness. Antony Hegrty doesn’t act cute; he acts transgendered and overweight. But what do the artsy ‘children’ of Architecture in Helsinki decide to do? They decide to act like cute jackasses. And that makes their music all the worse for listening.

RATING: 2/5

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