Man, do we love Rocktober, so Team Metroblogging showed up for last night’s acronym-tastic Architecture in Helsinki and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show at the Showbox ready for anything. Ready, in fact, for sober anything, because we do not like giving up our space in the crowd once we’ve weaseled our way in.

We walked into the Showbox a few songs into Takka Takka’s set and found them not at all objectionable and in fact a little charming, with their tambourine and harmonica. After they finished we wormed our way forward and found pockets of teenagers sitting on the floor smoking pot. Where, we wondered, does low-priority pot smoking fall on the spectrum of no-smoking-in-bars enforcement?

I was very excited to see Architecture in Helsinki, who confused me in good ways when their second album, In Case We Die, was so different from the quaint Fingers Crossed. They kicked the set off with “Cemetery” and from that point on the crowd never stopped moving, dancing and air tromboning with abandon, which is the upside of an all ages show. One would think that with at least six people on stage someone would specialize on an instrument, but they wandered over the stage, picking up and playing things as they found them. It was like a Sid and Marty Krofft show on that stage, like we had just done too much acid and found ourselves in a 1972 technicolor kid’s show staffed by Australians. But, you know, in a good way.

AIH put on a dizzyingly fun show, with the frantic frontman in a crazy hat kissing the (filthy) stage in a tribute to Method Man and making a reference to Kurt Cobain that seemed to go right over the crowd’s head. They played all of my favorites, as well as a “gothic power ballad,” a song dedicated to a mean hairdresser, and something Josh would like to call “tribal calypso.” I have had “It’5!” stuck in my head all day long.

It seemed like a lot of the younger crowd was there to see AIH, because between sets the bar emptied and the older drunks came down for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. They put on a tight show, starting off with a new song but segueing right into “Is This Love,” which sent the crowd right back to dancing. (We are not ashamed to admit that Team Metroblogging might have done some dancing too.) They brought along a fancy light show, too, and while I’m sad that Alec Ounsworth was wearing a hat I was easily distracted by the adorable backdrop. Cute clouds making faces? Ok!

Ounsworth doesn’t talk much while he’s playing, which I am ok with because his speaking voice is rather…buzzy. They started off most songs with what looked like a private little jam session and provoked a whole lot of jumping when they got to “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth.” Architecture in Helsinki filed back onstage for “Satan Said Dance,” rivaling Broken Social Scene for the “Most People I’ve Seen Onstage at the Showbox at Once” award. They tried to end the set with “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” but the crowd was having none of it, stomping and yelling until the band eventually showed back up for two more.

I hope that tonight’s show is as energetic and just plain fun as last night’s.