The Helio Sequence Keep Your Eyes Ahead by: Tom Bradbury Wed:13-Feb-08 Label: Sub Pop Year: 2008 WB rating 80 out of 100

The Helio Sequence are a band torn between epic post punk and thoughtful alt-country/folk. It may seem that these styles have little in common, and that’s because they don’t. Consequently The Helio Sequence initially come across as synthesists; as if there is a rather schizophrenic quality to their new album Keep Your Eyes Ahead, it’s a bit like watching The Edge duke it out with Dylan for control of the band’s psyche – at the end of the album you are left wondering just what it is that you have been listening to.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to defy categorization, it means you possess originality, but other times it can just mean that you are all over the place. Not to sit on the fence, but it is hard to pinpoint exactly which one of these camps The Helio Sequence belongs too. Instead let me say this: it turns out that it is the far extremes of The Helio Sequences that are the most moving, the ones that flirt with the middle ground of their sound matching the mediocrity of the approach.

On the more folk side, ‘Shed Your Love’, a track that sounds eerily like an outtake from a Ryan Adams album, shows Brandon Summers excelling in the sort of haunting vocal performance that recalls Adams at his evocative best. He paints a compelling lyrical picture of a man down on his luck in the dark streets of New York, at the crossroads of his life. “On a subway train before the dawn/The ride was short but my thoughts were long…Headed out to leave it all behind/Escape it all to see what I could find”. It becomes obvious here that the hours Summers spent immersing himself in Dylanology were well spent. For even though he is no match for the Bard in the precision of his wordplay, he is able to point toward a deep reservoir of hard to define truth and profundity through his performance in a way that is obviously Dylan influenced. Instrumentally, poignant Godrich-style synth provides a fitting backdrop to Summers’ pensive finger picking. Surrounded by chiming guitar rockers this gentle track seemingly surfaces out of nowhere.

At the beginning of Keep Your Eyes Ahead there are two equally powerful and affecting songs of an entirely different nature: ‘Lately’ and ‘Can’t Say No’ are infinitely less reserved than ‘Shed Your Love’, giving absolutely no indication that a track like that is on the way. ‘Lately’ is a post-punk crooner, unabashed in its proclamation of independence, “Lately, I don’t think of you at all…I’m living alone I don’t need you anymore”. Likewise, ‘Can’t Say No’ is dominated by vertical space reaching guitars, pushing out rather than looking inward. Its jubilant force is undeniable. Indeed, as Summers sings, “Even if you wanted to/Even if you could/You can’t say no”. For my mind, it would have made more sense to have these tracks at the end, as a release of all the tension built up by Summers emotional turmoil found in the softer songs. If there are weak tracks on this album, it is because they cannot match the grandeur of its openers of the quiet intensity of ‘Shed Your Love’ and its companion piece, ‘Broken Afternoon’.

Maybe The Helio Sequence are all over the place, but perhaps it’s just because they have a lot to say, and require different musical languages to express it in. This is not a jack of all trades master of none scenario, indeed they do everything they try very well, and the dynamic achieved is not dissimilar from the one Jimmy Page perfected with Zeppelin, where all out blues rockers were contrasted with English folk. Keep Your Eyes Ahead then is perhaps not so much the result of a split personality as it is a consequence of feeling both complex and basic emotions, which does not make you insane, only human.