Let's talk about cheese, the figurative kind. Literal cheese does share at least one trait with its adjectival counterpart (i.e. "cheesy"): it's polarizing. While many people love cheese, and some hate it, few are ambivalent. Go ahead; test my theory. Ask 50 strangers if they'd like a nice wedge of sharp cheddar. Some will say, "Cheddar? Hell yes, please." Others will say, "No! I cannot stand cheese!" Many will just walk away quickly and have to be counted as the control group in this flawed experiment, since what the hell are you doing offering cheese to strangers? However, I'd wager that not a single one would be like, "Cheese? Whatever."
Biggie once asked: "What's beef?" (and unfortunately, he found out). I now ask: What's cheese? Cheese is difficult to pin down. Like postmodernism, grace, or pornography, we know cheese when we see it, and can list its qualities all day without attaining its complete essence. For one: Cheese is earnest, although not everything that's earnest is cheesy. For another: Cheese is ostentatious, the dubious life of the party. It does not slip in, fashionably late, through the side entrance. It storms in through the front door in a sequined tuxedo with lace cuffs, recites a ribald limerick and spikes the punch with peppermint schnapps. Cheese is grandiose, and not afraid to be maudlin-- there is no obfuscation with cheese, no artful hedging of bets: Cheese is heart-sleeved and money-mouthed, and it dares you to insult it for being what it proudly proclaims itself to be.
Why is cheese important? Well, it isn't. Cheese, by its very nature, is frivolous. But it is important within the context of this review, because your relative lactose tolerance is going to drastically influence your response to this record. See that rating up there? Numerical ratings are troublesome. Numbers are stately and immutable; in their absolute precision, they limn what is, for all intents and purposes, a personal judgment (one heavily influenced, in this case, by my own relationship with cheese, which is not what one would call "close") as an objective, universal one.
So, what you'll need to do is consider your own personal affinity for cheese, which can be measured by any number of factors: How well do you like Liberace? Notoriously bad sitcoms? Black velvet paintings, preferably of Elvis, bullfighters, or Elvis fighting a bull? Do you enjoy "theme restaurants," especially if the theme is indeterminate and mainly involves a glut of random pop cultural detritus hanging from the walls? Next, rate your affinity for cheese on a scale ranging from -5 to +5. Here, -5 will signify that you have a deep-seated anathema for cheese, and +5 will indicate a deep-seated appreciation. Once you have your personal cheese affinity rating nailed down, add or subtract it to the rating above in order to determine the rating for The Helio Sequence's Love and Distance that best suits you.
Now that we've articulated a sort of sliding-scale, individually specific model of cheese appreciation, I can go on record as saying, without it being taken as a putatively objective value judgment: The Helio Sequence's Love and Distance is fucking cheesy. And now that we've pretty thoroughly unpacked the mysterious qualities of cheese and devised a foil to offset its destabilizing properties (as in, my personal disdain for cheese would have pulled the rating unconscionably low otherwise), we can discuss the quality of the music outside of its cheesiness, which is actually not bad.
The Helio Sequence is a duo comprised of singer/guitarist Brandon Summers and keyboardist/drummer Benjamin Weikel, who drummed for Modest Mouse during Jeremiah Green's leave of absence. (What, did you think we were reviewing this because I was dying to talk about cheese?). And so you're wondering: How does it stack up to Modest Mouse? Well, you know how there was Death Cab for Cutie, and then there was this side project called The Postal Service, and heads were like, "Whoa, this side project is better than the main draw"? Well, this is nothing like that.
The two bands do, however, share some common traits: The Helio Sequence blend bright electronica, pop melodies, and various stylized sound effects. But vocally, I take issue with their tendency to veer towards the recent work of-- and I really hate to say this, but-- Dave Matthews. And yet, there are some killer melodies peeking out from beneath this band's Velveeta blanket: The songs are sharply constructed, featuring layer upon layer of electronic and live percussion, synth patches, guitars, and sundry other bells and whistles that somehow keep away from the overly dense side of things and manage to blast out in tight pop songs. However, their reliance on harmonica on the opening "Harmonica Song" is a troubling sign of things to come, and lends the music a quality not unlike that of the mid-90s road anthem "Life Is a Highway". Which is bad to me, but may be good to you.
The duo's 2000 debut, Com Plex, and its follow-up Young Effectuals exhibited none of these traits-- rather, The Helio Sequence simply attempted some harmless Beatle mimicry in a show of future potential. Unfortunately, Love and Distance showcases a band that has clearly fully realized its sound, but in doing so have abandoned many of the attributes that once held so much promise. The result is certainly ambitious-- one could never say that lots of care and detail work wasn't put into this record; it's just a shame that their affectations and identity-forming flourishes have led them to a sound that discards their once-unmistakable My Bloody Valentine influence for that of HORDE tour second-stagers. Then again, you might like Blues Traveller.
