The Helio Sequence's first two albums were dense, exciting blasts of noise, melody, and electronic wildness that seemed to jump out of the speakers. Their third album,
Love and Distance, is still fairly loud, dreamy rock, but the wall of sound has been pared back and the vocals have been brought to the forefront. Instead of dreamily floating along with the waves of noise, now
Brandon Summers grittily shouts over the top. The guitars no longer howl and crash about; they are layered carefully and applied cautiously. Instead of sounding like the teenage spawn of
My Bloody Valentine and
Mouse on Mars, now they sound like a cousin to
Radiohead. The closing "Looks Good (But You Looked Away)" is the kind of cosmic country that
Beachwood Sparks do so well, with a very nice laid-back, outer space feel. Maybe to a fresh set of ears,
Love and Distance might sound like an interesting take on the whole modern
Radiohead-y guitar rock with electronics thing, and this is certainly better than
South or
Elbow. Chalk it up as a holding pattern on the way to something else, and maybe even a "grower." ~ Tim Sendra