Art museums are places I enjoy when I’m in them — in fact I enjoy them more than I think I will — but they’re never places I yearn to go nor places I remember much once I leave. Earlier this year I spent several hours at the Met in New York, but am hard-pressed to recall specific items which struck my fancy. I did enjoy it, though, whatever it was.
For the past week Negotiations, the latest album from Portland’s The Helio Sequence, has been on steady play in my house — not because I can’t stop listening to it but because I can’t remember it once it’s over. Yes, I like what I’m hearing, and yes, it’s a worthy effort that was several years (and one flood) in the making. But damn if it stays with me for more than a few fleeting minutes. I’m like Guy Pearce in Memento when it comes to Negotiations (if only this could be true with “songs” from the tragic band known as Train).
Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel, the duo that make up The Helio Sequence, have created a clean and inventive fifth album in Negotiations, with roaming guitar work and a warmer sound than 2008’s Keep Your Eyes Ahead. But what Eyes has that Negotiations does not is the ability to surprise and bellow — albums need to knock you off the even-keel to jog your brain cells.
The album-opening “One More Time” is a prime example of this malaise. It has a nice beat, Weikel’s syncopated drumming shows early promise, but the song devolves into a mix of Interpol and Longwave, leaving Weikel’s early beat to linger like a last-to-leave party guest. “October” maintains a presence just below the radar: Summers sounds muted and typical, and though the track finds a solid hook, there’s nothing especially new about it.
“Downward Spiral” finds traction where the others miss. Ethereal and soaring, it borrows from Radiohead at first (never a bad practice), but moves into different territory with confidence. Summers sings with added promise here, he’s more in tune with the music around him for the first time. “Hall of Mirrors” succeeds in other ways, moving at a brisk pace as the redundant chord arrangement is supplemented by splashy cymbals and heightened lyrics. A break midway through the song builds into an exciting bridge that is unexpected. It’s the one song I return to again and again.
But the expected returns, which is OK if you like being described as OK. “December,” like the “October” before it, tapers off into anonymity, while “When The Shadow Falls” has the band aping sounds from Keep Your Eyes Ahead, which all seems too little, too late.
Negotiations has some perk to it, and the time spent during it is enjoyable enough. But it doesn’t last, easily forgotten amidst a sea of like efforts.
