Art museums are places I enjoy when I\u2019m in them \u2014 in fact I enjoy them more than I think I will \u2014 but they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
For the past week Negotiations, the latest album from Portland\u2019s The Helio Sequence, has been on steady play in my house \u2014 not because I can\u2019t stop listening to it but because I can\u2019t remember it once it\u2019s over. Yes, I like what I\u2019m hearing, and yes, it\u2019s 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\u2019m like Guy Pearce in Memento when it comes to Negotiations (if only this could be true with \u201csongs\u201d from the tragic band known as Train).<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Keep Your Eyes Ahead. But what Eyes has that Negotiations does not is the ability to surprise and bellow \u2014 albums need to knock you off the even-keel to jog your brain cells.<\/p>\n
The album-opening \u201cOne More Time\u201d is a prime example of this malaise. It has a nice beat, Weikel\u2019s syncopated drumming shows early promise, but the song devolves into a mix of Interpol and Longwave, leaving Weikel\u2019s early beat to linger like a last-to-leave party guest. \u201cOctober\u201d maintains a presence just below the radar: Summers sounds muted and typical, and though the track finds a solid hook, there\u2019s nothing especially new about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDownward Spiral\u201d 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\u2019s more in tune with the music around him for the first time. \u201cHall of Mirrors\u201d 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\u2019s the one song I return to again and again.<\/p>\n
But the expected returns, which is OK if you like being described as OK. \u201cDecember,\u201d like the \u201cOctober\u201d before it, tapers off into anonymity, while \u201cWhen The Shadow Falls\u201d has the band aping sounds from Keep Your Eyes Ahead, which all seems too little, too late.<\/p>\n
Negotiations has some perk to it, and the time spent during it is enjoyable enough. But it doesn\u2019t last, easily forgotten amidst a sea of like efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Art museums are places I enjoy when I\u2019m in them \u2014 in fact I enjoy them more than I think I will \u2014 but they\u2019re 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[327,328],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-helio-sequence","tag-negotiations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}