Eugene weekly., August 14, 2014, Page 28, Image 28

BLEEDING
OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
“This sounds really young, it sounds like early Helio
Sequence,” says Brandon Summers, the band’s singer and
guitarist, of the new record. “To me, it feels like a
90-degree sunny day in Portland.”
The Portland-based alt-rock duo is back on stage for a
West Coast summer tour, during which the band is
unveiling tracks from the new album, due out in early
2015. EW caught up with Helio Sequence two days after
they finished recording.
Two years after the release of Negotiations, Summers
and Benjamin Weikel (drums, keyboard) decided to change
their creative process and leave space for pure
spontaneity. “Negotiations was a very labored record. For
this album we wanted something different, with no pre-
meditation,” Summers says.
Instead of planning the new album, they spent five
weeks “jamming,” recording 10-plus-minute keyboard and
guitar loops and lyrics fragments. “Stop it. Save it. Leave it,”
is how Summers describes the band’s creative philosophy.
“Then we listened to it, looking for that initial spark.”
That spark may be a single word or a bassline; from
this, the duo put together about 26 demo songs without
mixing, burned a CD and asked their closest circle of
friends to vote for their “Top 10.”
“These five weeks were the most intense of my creative
process,” Summers says. The result is a somewhat younger,
more upbeat record, which mirrors, in a lot of ways, the
band’s roots. From the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper to My Bloody
Valentine, Summers recognizes the footprint of music he
and Weikel listened to as teens.
The new record, Summers says, will feature introspec-
tive, diary-like lyrics, more backbeat and even some unex-
pected funky basslines like in the song “Battle Lines.”
“Words that meant nothing together suddenly do. It’s
really a bleeding of the subconscious,” Summers says.
“Inevitably, you listen to it and then your realize ‘Oh my
god, that’s what that song is about.’”
The Helio Sequence joins New Zealand singer-
songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Liam Finn 8 pm
Wednesday, Aug. 20, at WOW Hall; $15. — Barbara Marty
BURN BOATS,
NOT BRIDGES
In 2009, Shelby Earl quit her job on
Amazon’s music team to record her first
album. The Seattle singer-songwriter was
excited; after three years of promoting
other musicians at the internet giant, she
was going to be the one promoted —
hopefully.
“Then six months in it got really
scary. It got really real and the
money ran out,” Earl tells EW. “I told
my mom I was freaking out.”
Earl’s mother responded, “Well, you
know, Shelby, someone asked how you
were doing.” Her mother went on to say
that Earl’s stepdad told them “she pulled
all the boats ashore and she burned
them.” He was referring to the legend of
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés
ordering his army to burn their fleet of
ships so they couldn’t retreat from
battle.
“I wrote this song that
day,” Earl says of “Burn
The Boats.” “I named the
record that because it just felt so right.”
Coming full circle, Amazon named Burn The
Boats the “No. 1 Outstanding 2011 Album You Might Have Missed”
and NPR music critic Ann Powers deemed Earl her “new favorite songwriter.”
Oddly enough, only a snippet of the titular song by the folk-rocker made the album, but Earl
toured with it and, before long, it became “sort of an anthem” with audiences. The day after Earl
plays Sam Bond’s Aug. 17 — the first stop on her tour — she will finally release “Burn The Boats”
through the Seattle-based London Tone Music’s 52X52 project, in which the music production
company releases a new song by a different artist every week for a year.
In the meantime, Earl came out with 2013’s Swift Arrows. The sophomore album is, like fellow
folk-rockers Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone and Jenny Lewis’ Acid Tongue, a blazing vocal and
lyrical knockout. The soulful title track — a heartache-filled breakup tune in which Earl croons
“When words are all you’ve got, you’ll find one poison-tipped swift arrow in your mind/ And
they’ll find one poison-tipped swift arrow in their eye” over doo-wop piano and church bells —
caught the attention of Rolling Stone in November.
In the past year, accolades for Swift Arrows have come pouring in from Paste Magazine,
American Songwriter, KEXP and NPR, who featured Earl on “Music For Folks Who’ve Been Through
A Few Things.” Salon.com says Earl “writes songs for grownups.”
When I ask her about this “grownup” label, she laughs.
“I think that it’s great because it’s true. I’m a grownup songwriter. I’m not 20,” she says. “I
don’t attempt to do that. I just write about my own stuff and what’s going on with my friends and
what I see around me.” She continues, “The songwriters I respect write about real stuff, not kid
stuff.” She ticks off names like Case and Lewis, as well as Ryan Adams, Björk, Rufus Wainwright
and Ben Gibbard.
“They are all song-oriented artists,” she says. “They can all embody that idea that if you have
a pretty voice, you can’t sing about pretty things.”
Shelby Earl plays after Sacramento’s folk-pop artist Justin Farren 8:30 pm Sunday, Aug. 17,
at Sam Bond’s; $5. To see Earl’s video for “Swift Arrows” and read what she said about the
process, visit the EW blog. — Alex Notman
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