Keep Your Eyes Ahead - The Helio Sequence
Keep Your Eyes Ahead Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 19 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 15 Ratings

  • Summary: The Portland, Oregon-based duo releases its fourth album.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 19
  2. Negative: 0 out of 19
  1. It's the most solid album in the group's discography, haunting with moments of near perfection. [Mar 2008, p.140]
  2. Much of Keep Your Eyes Ahead, like the softly plucked 'Shed Your Love' or the Dylanesque 'Broken Afternoon,' could easily backdrop drippy TV dramas, but that isn’t necessarily a knock. Both are beautiful tunes.
  3. An album whose deep felt emotion and effortless execution proves that there’s nothing like a little trial and tribulation to get the artistic synapses firing.
  4. 60
    With Keep Your Eyes Ahead Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel have pushed their fringes out of the way to display a new focus. [Mar 2008, p.112]

See all 19 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 6
  3. Negative: 1 out of 6
  1. CodyE.
    10
    To all those that haven't checked this CD out, please do. It's absolutely amazing. In the process of checking out Love and Distance right now, which I hear is just as good. Expand
  2. MikeC.
    10
    I love these guys. Their last album was one of my favorites from the past 10 years, but Keep Your Eyes Ahead is even better. It has a lot of really catchy, beautiful, emotional tunes, as usual. But this one has a seamless overall feel. Every song perfectly leads into the next, even though the duo tweaks their sound/style quite a bit. I prefer the multi-layered, upbeat tracks that features trippy guitar distortion. But the quieter songs are excellent too and the lyrics are creative and memorable. The true test of how great this album is, for me, came last night when I had some friends over. I put the CD on and they all kept asking about the band. After we listened to it from start to finish they asked me to play it again. Expand
  3. NoahH.
    7
    The album is very solid, a marked improvement over Love and Distance with regards to song quality and sequencing (though that album does contain a few amazing tracks) and holds together well as an 'album', but I'm still waiting for the proper followup to Young Effectuals. This album is one that is instantly likable but, as with most instantly likable lps, when it's over it's over. There isn't much staying power and not much worth coming back to after it's been in your player for two weeks. I prefer the riskier sound and songs of Young Effectuals which, while not as solid as far as a collection of songs, offers far more to discover and digest as it reveals its charm much more gradually. It's a sound and style they get farther from as they try to "hone" their songwriting and "focus" their sound, but it seems to me that a major label (yes, sub pop is now a major label relatively speaking!) and pressure to sell records has stripped the band of it's willingness to take chances. I really hope album 5 can veer a bit back toward the sound they were working with on Young Effectuals and we finally get a proper Helio Sequence album. Expand
  4. PB.
    3
    this is music is like cotton candy. give me a proper follow-up to young Effectuals!

See all 6 User Reviews