Review: 1/5
Release date: Out now

If you like guitar with lots of reverb and vocals that sound like all the good Walkmen songs combined then you may love the new Helio Sequence album “Negotiations.” To be blunt I thought it this was a Walkmen album but there we go, you can’t have it all, and here I am wearing sweatpants and shitting on other people’s art that probably took them a lot longer to create than it did for me to tear it apart. Bands are tough. If someone put on “Negotiations” while you were shopping you’d probably enjoy it. But these guys sound exactly the same as like, thirty other bands.

Has this reverb-heavy intensely emotionally ambivalent “Ambien Rock” genre finally reached an end? I, for one, hope so. This kinda thing started with early Walkmen albums and peaked with (ugh) Arcade Fire (the worsttttt) and now is just languishing in some sort of – well, have you ever gone back to a party you’ve already left? Or seen a 14 year-old wear a leather jacket? That’s what this sounds like.

All cheap-shots aside; the album isn’t very good and sounds like it could have been released in any year from 2003-2012. But I’m sure they’re really nice guys. Goddamit now we’re probably going to get shit from Sub Pop for giving them a bad review. Look, I’m sure everyone involved here is great and fun at parties but jeeeeeesus could this album sound any more like the Ambien dream of a sorority girl during a long car ride?