If Love and Distance was the album that pushed the Helio Sequence off the rails, Keep Your Eyes Ahead is the sound of the duo getting back on track. They're still too loud to be the work of a genuine pop band, but that's certainly where the Helio Sequence seems to be heading, having trimmed the length of their tunes (nothing here exceeds the 4:30 mark) and emphasized songcraft over pure ambience. The album's biggest songs - "Hallelujah," "Can't Say No," and the reverb-drenched title track - are driven not only by dense guitars, but also a new focus on melody. But the group is still able to build up cloudy walls of sound, adding bubbling electronics and layers of instruments into songs that are lush, towering, and altogether gorgeous. Find The Helio Sequence tour schedule in Ottawa, concert details, reviews and photos. eTickets has top seats available for every The Helio Sequence concert in Canada and the US. For a band that used to channel My Bloody Valentine's mix of noise and beauty, folksy ballads like "Broken Afternoon" and "Shed Your Love" are a big change, a result of Summers' desire to slow down the band's galloping pace. Get The Helio Sequence Tickets for all Ottawa concerts at the most affordable prices and with minimum fees. Summers no longer yelps, perhaps because his scarred throat simply won't let him, and the group now alternates between massive psych-rock, dreamy pop, and Dylan-influence folk. Four years later, Summers appears to have regained the use of his pipes, and the band's fourth album, Keep Your Eyes Ahead, is another sonic jump. The frontman had an even tougher time on the road, where a string of shows steadily whittled his voice down to a raspy fraction of its original power. The album was a step forward for the Helio Sequence, but it was still a haphazard move, one that found Summers yelping and shouting in an attempt to deliver a memorable performance. As some of those tunes and words have anthemic or dreamy (particularly in "Take, Take, Take") tones that aren't bad, it wouldn't be such a bad idea to give them more prominence in the mix.On 2004's Love and Distance, frontman Brandon Summers found his voice and pushed it the forefront of his band's swirling sound. It's for those who like this kind of ambience as much or more than specific tunes. It still does tend to wear away at one's attention, the songs blurring together into similar overall moods as the disc progresses. Comparisons to British bands like My Bloody Valentine, who crafted a similar wall of psychedelic post-punk, are inevitable, though the Helio Sequence are a little stronger in the variety and melodic harmony departments. The Sub Pop debut from this long-running Pacific Northwest duo featuring Modest Mouse drummer Benjamin Weikel buries a. The Helio Sequence Profile: Portland, Oregon indie rock duo who incorporate electronic and psychedelic into their sometimes dreamy, very humanist aesthetic. The lyrics are general statements of alienated wishes for individuality that manage not to succumb to rage or rant. Indeed, the lyrics are about as hard to comfortably detect in the mix as they are to read in the sleeve, in which the type is so faded and the color scheme contrasted so that squinting is inevitable. On their second album, the Helio Sequence essay a full swirl of two-man band sound, combining dense electric textures in which the voice is just another hazy element with atmospheric keyboards, guitar, and electronic effects. That the Helio Sequence- to date, a good-not-great duo on Sub Pop and Cavity Search- buck this trend stands as one of the pleasant surprises of the still-young year.
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