Just because you can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean you know how. For Brandon Summers, the lead singer and guitarist of the Portland duo The Helio Sequence, this was a lesson he learned the hard way. On the band’s 2004 album Love and Distance, Summers pushed his voice to levels it didn’t know how to endure. Made worse under the strain of a rigorous touring schedule through the US and Europe, Summers’ vocals chords became severely damaged, forcing the singer into self-imposed bouts of silence and physically painful performances dulled with the help of a whiskey bottle. After a doctor-prescribed vow of vocal suppression for two months, Summers began teaching himself proper singing exercises and microphone technique. Once again joined by drummer and keyboardist Benjamin Weikel-The Helio Sequence‘s latest offering Keep Your Eyes Ahead reflects the group’s reasserted control. Moving between tracks of layered guitars, hazy reverb, and digital sheen (such as the psychedelic pop opener “Lately” and the ethereal title track), only to shed their shoe-gazing infl uences for several Dylan folk ballads (such as the ghostly empty “Shed Your Love” and the ramblin’ man crooner “Broken Afternoon”), Summers and Weikel establish a healthy medium to their sound without making it come off as something overtly safe. Unlike previous works, none of Keep Your Eyes Ahead‘s 10 tracks overstay their welcome, having traded in the band’s typical six-minute excursions for songs that rarely move beyond the four-minute mark. It’s perhaps in the effects heavy acoustics of the standout track “You Can Come To Me” that Summers makes the biggest acknowledgements of his own missteps, singing, “Finding out what you want is not what you need / You can talk, talk, talk / But the words aren’t clear.” Sometimes all it takes to get back on track in a little Throat Coat®.
-Mike Hilleary
The Helio Sequence: www.theheliosequence.com
SubPop: www.subpop.com