Architecture in Helsinki, Glass Candy, Panther @ the Showbox

Like I’ve said, last night’s Architecture in Helsinki show was a wonderfully mismatched, totally brilliant bill. Panther kicked things off with some spare quasi-tribal drum circling and washes of delayed vocals. The newly expanded two-piece band bore little resemblance to Panther’s old one-man show. Where Charlie Salas-Humara’s solo performances relied on pre-recorded fryk beats and his mostly unadulterated falsetto-inflected crooning, the new line-up adds live drumming and a lot more vocal delay to the mix. The one through-line is Salas-Humara’s bizarre stage presence, a combination of gawky pantomimed dance moves and awkward self-deprecating banter. The heavy echo effects and live percussive pulse make lend Panther’s songs more of a basement Boredums sun jam vibe and less of an ironic electro funk feeling. Even the backing tracks felt more acoustic and rocking, less digital Portland crunk, recalling The Planet The as much as past Panther. It really is like a new band, and it’s for the better.

As strange an opening act as Panther is for AiH, Glass Candy may be even stranger. Architecture is all sunny, summer cute—hot air, cool breezes, campfire choruses—but Glass Candy is icy cold, digital, and tinged with after dark anxieties. Their had some rough patches (though not as many as their recent Pony show)—after the long intro to “Sugar & Whitebread,” Johnny Jewel dropped a slow, off-tempo beat, forcing them to start over—but they were hypnotically cool and compelling as always. Highlights included their cover of Kraftwek’s “Computer Love” (Trent Moorman swears they were interpolating a Coldplay riff in there somewhere; I doubt it), “Life After Sundown,” and the eventually corrected “Sugar & Whitebread.” The band also played material from their stellar new record, B/E/A/T/B/O/X (available from Italians Do It Better), including—I think—”Candy Castle,” “Etheric Device,” and “Rolling Down the Hills.” It was a fun show, if not as crazy as their smalle venue performances of late, and thanks to an inexplicalby small crowd there was plenty of room to dance, even up close to the stage.

Things filled up considerably for Architecture in Helsinki, though (I know at least a couple people who came late after catching Joanna Newsom’s orchestral performance at Benaroya). The six-piece band were ebullient and adorable as always, especially lead singer/guitarist Cameron Bird, keyboardist/vocalist Kellie Sutherland, and that one guy who seems to play every instrument on stage (drums, keyboard, trombone)—Bird knocked over his electronic drum pad while jumping around with his guitar during “Nothing’s Wrong.” In Case We Die remains my favorite AiH record, and “It’s Five,” “The Cemetery,” their percussive jam on “Do the Whirlwind,” and espeically the crush-worthy “Wishbone” all sounded fantastic last night. But the bright, Talking Heads world pop of Places Like This works so well live—the aforementioned “Nothing’s Wrong,” the jangly “Like it or Not,” the bouyant “Hold Music,” the loping “Kokomo”-interpolating tropicalia of “Heart it Races”—that it has me now re-evaluating the new record, which I initially dismissed as middling. I think it might actually be another really good record.

Also, this is the second show in a row I’ve seen from Architecture in Helsinki in which they take a moment to wax ecstatic about how monumental it is for them to visit Seattle, what with them being, in Birds’ words, “Gen-Xers” and big Nirvana fans. It’s easy to forget how much Seattle still means to people, what with everyone escaping to Portland these days, so it’s nice to know we still have cred in Melbourne, at least.