Architecture In Helsinki, Caribou / Manchester Academy 3, Manchester
Canada one, Australia nil as Caribou destroy Architecture
Words Lauren Strain
Two sets of drums face each other in battle. One owner glares at the other across his metalwork; each brings a limb down onto tight tom-tom skins in a sort of opposable symmetry. All around and above, holograph-like lights in pinks and blues rotate, span, expand and inhale. Focussing heavily on material from their current progeny, the seething, pearlescent Andorra, Ontario’s Caribou plant magic seeds with gasps of penny whistle, then watch ‘em grow ten-fold.
Dan Snaith is a picture, his unblinking eyes boring tunnels into unseen airpockets as the band muster a tripping dream with the vocals of settling spirits. Simultaneously, these soundscapes are solid, strong and furious. You could reach out and grab hold of their components; you can feel yourself chute through the funnels of ‘Sundialing’, its rhythms all built from sticks and pipes. Tearing fresh horizons across yer frontal lobes, Caribou play music to short-circuit anyone’s perception of what it means to feel lost and found, or dislocated and happy with it.
Now for Architecture In Helsinki, a rush of key-splats and extreme trombone. For the first parps of super-octane hi-NRG, we’re hooked. But there’s something about this Australian mini-carnival (there are six of them) that soon wears thin. Maybe it’s their ceaseless vim - the fact that they never seem to modulate away from being terrifically happy - or maybe it’s their occasional recourse to gimmickry (the “stranger danger” intro of ‘It’5’ will always annoy). Perversely, maybe it’s their… well, confidence. They’re almost too satisfying, too tailored for lightly bopping heads and foot shuffles. While recent material is meatier and more melodically advanced than anything from debut In Case We Die - which had a tendency to sound all wheedling and whimsical - the new record’s showstealer, ‘Heart It Races’, falls strangely flat, its exhilarating calypso drums barely there.
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