The Helio Sequence

Keep Your Eyes Ahead

2008-05-05

It’s been four years since the last Helio Sequence album, 2004’s Love and Distance, an electro-pop album brimming with one brilliant, dreamlike section after another. Keep Your Eyes Open delivers much in the same manner, but it also delivers in some new ways, too. Some of the pop sections here (particularly the ending of “Hallelujah” and the entirety of the title track “Keep Your Eyes Ahead”) are truly sublime, definitely among the best work that the band has done. Elsewhere on the album, though, The Helio Sequence take an entirely different direction, be it the soft folk of “Shed Your Love”, the whistful Americana in “Broken Afternoon” or the succinct alt-country murkiness in “No Regrets”, the album’s closing track. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the album is “diverse” in its instrumentation, but I will say that The Helio Sequence have deftly incorporated these new elements into their sound. And although it’s the electro-pop bliss that ultimately makes Keep Your Eyes Ahead work as an album, these new elements don’t hurt, either. - Adam Goran

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