Only a handful of times in my show-going career have I been completely blown away by an opening band that I was previously unfamiliar with. Of those, only one rapidly ascended to rank amongst my favorite active bands. As you can probably guess, that band is The Helio Sequence. The funny thing is I saw them open up for Minus The Bear, who at the time I absolutely loved. Since then however, I've found myself listening to Minus The Bear less and less (especially since that turd Omni) and The Helio Sequence more.
The first time I heard The Helio Sequence I was impressed with the amount of noise these two dudes made. I would describe their first few albums as shoegaze, or perhaps shoegaze's catchier cousin dream pop. These were big wall of sound affairs, the walls being composed of pedal driven guitar, loops, synth, 8-bit bleeps and bloops and of course drums (interesting tidbit: drummer Benjamin Weikel plied his trade on Modest Mouse's Good News For People Who Love Bad News). Those things can still be found on Keep Your Eyes Ahead, just not in the same quantity as their other releases. Really, the transition from dream pop to indie rock/pop began on their third album Love And Distance, but even that seems dense when compared to the sheared down sound of this album. It might be ridiculous to call the results of a band diluting the sound they had cultivated and playing more by the pop playbook fresh, but to me that's exactly what Keep Your Eyes Ahead is. It's like that first day in the spring where you can go outside without a jacket, it might only be five degrees warmer than the day before, but that five degrees makes all the difference and somehow you feel unburdened. The Helio Sequence has always written tremendously catchy songs, but by scaling back a bit and committing to writing the pop songs they always seemed to know they were capable of, The Helio Sequence have produced what is, to date, their master work and one of my favorite albums of the aughts.
Keep Your Eyes Ahead is essential listening for everybody.
The Helio Sequence on last.fm
Get it here.
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