When I first heard to Architecture In Helsinki, I instantly loved them. Their brilliant and catchy indie pop was a nice and cheerful mix to all the rock music I was listening to around 7 years ago and was completely refreshing at times.

Discovered them along with The Go! Team whom I’ve seen at the beginning of the year. For some reason, both bands have not been touring for a few years, haven’t played in London but came back this year with new records in tow.

The venue was XOYO which has quickly become my favourite small venue. After all, it is a venue in Shoreditch which is such a vibrant place although not as crazy and crowded as Camden.

Support for the evening was The Russian Futurists, an indie pop band from Canada. Yes, we have Architecture In Helsinki who actually hail from Australia and The Russian Futurists from Canada. It’s a fun twist on band names.

Their music was a little slower paced but catchy as you’d expect from pop and was a mix of indie styles which made their set very interesting despite not much enthusiasm from the crowd. Not as fast and upbeat as AiH, but a great support band. Too bad I missed them on both dates of Camden Crawl. It would have been nice to have seen this lot again.

Now, Architecture In Helsinki, where do I even start as it has now been more than half a month and 4 gigs after this event.

As this was a tour of their new album, most of the songs were from Moment Bends which is a pretty good record in itself and well worth the the four year wait since Places Like This (released in 2007).

For some reason, I always thought Architecture In Helsinki had at least 9 members which made me wonder how 9 people would fit in XOYO’s tiny platform of a stage.

It seems somewhere between Places Like This and Moment Bends, the band somehow trimmed down to 5.

The new songs sounded as cheerful as they do on record. Unlike old records, Moment Bends has a positive tone to it’s songs and by this, I mean the lyrics as well as the tune. Most of the new songs sounded quite polished live.

Highlights of the evening would be Escapee, which is my favourite from the new album, and old songs which included Hold Music, Debbie, Like It Or Not, Do The Whirlwind, and It’s 5!.

Surprisingly, they did not perform Cemetery much to the disappointment of everyone in the venue.

The show seemed quite short but was definitely sweet. AiH brandished their new songs as well as I expected them to do so after years of listening to them.

Seeing them live was very much worth the wait despite the fact that they didn’t play Cemetery which is the most song about a cemetery.

My trifecta of seeing The Go! Team, of Montreal and Architecture In Helsinki is now complete and I will most gladly see any of these bands again for some brilliantly uplifting indie pop.