Halloween marked a fitting night for Architecture in Helsinki to arrive at Eugene’s WOW Hall. With its genre-evading, zany style of pop and energetic displays, the holiday atmosphere proved a perfect platform for the indie deviants.
The opening act, The Jason Webley Quartet, soon clicked with the excitable, inebriated crowd. Lead singer Jason played the first part of the set without his backing band, but still had the audience obeying his every order. Before long he had fans spinning in circles, putting their arms around people next to them and dancing to the band’s alternative take on folk rock. Renditions of pop songs including Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” made the little-known Seattle-based band’s set ring with an air of familiarity.
After meticulous preparation of an impressive arsenal of instruments, Architecture was ready to jazz, raggae, rock and pop things up. With a flamboyant on-stage presence that matched an audacious musical style, Architecture in Helsinki reeled through much material climaxing with its latest single, “Heart it Races.” Mixing electro samples, rap, traditional rock melodies and even jungle-infused beats, Architecture in Helsinki brought a sound never heard before to the concert hall.
Although Architecture in Helsinki is based in Australia, lead singer Cameron Bird lived in Portland for a year, where he came up with much of the material featured on the band’s first album, “Fingers Crossed.”
Cameron must have felt quite at home, then, as he and the rest of the six-person band worked the audience using a brilliant array of instruments ranging from electronic synthesizers to tubas and guitars.
With hundreds of people joined together in a sea of random Halloween costumes, hearing Cameron Bird unleash his unruly rapping skills over the tropically rooted, brass-inflected pop jig of “Debbie” never felt more right. With no effort, the band slid gracefully through musical genres from the subdued melodies of folk pop “What’s in Store?” to the jazz infused rap of “Hold Music.”
But for a band with so many styles under its belt, it may be difficult to make these styles work in harmony with one another. No such problem for the Australian art rockers; however, its new sounds of electronica overlap the classic sounds of jazz with finesse.
Even with such variety of threadwork running through the band’s construct, the sound is fantastically accessible and impossibly danceable. The members of Architecture are true performers. Multi-skilled and richly influenced, they don’t allow for their experimental edge to supersede their wonderfully fun pop sound.