Keep your Eyes Ahead, the fourth album from Portland duo The Helio Sequence, isn’t very remarkable. Though not usually considered a positive quality, in the Helio Sequence’s case, unremarkable seems to be exactly what they’re going for. Instead of trying for the flashy tourist attraction, the band quietly constructs lush dream-pop vistas that are perfectly content to be just that — scenery.

This leaves Eyes in something of an awkward position. While the majority of the album is intricately composed, nuanced pop built around Brandon Summers’s jangling guitars and Benjamin Weikel’s keyboard textures, it’s difficult to notice any of this. Most songs are tailor-made for drifting pleasantly into the background. Album opener “Lately,” for example, is a sly look at lost love wherein Summers goes to great lengths trying to convince a former flame — and himself — that’s he’s moved on, but only a line about “getting lost in daydreams” stands out, which is precisely the desire the song (and album) evokes in listeners.

Oddly, when Eyes does step out of the background, it runs into trouble — mainly in the form of its unnecessary folk finale. “Broken Afternoon” finds Summers doing his best Bob Dylan impersonation and though he fills the song with some nice poetic imagery, it doesn’t gel with the mood the rest of the album nurtures. Things derail further with the inexplicably hoedown-like album closer “No Regrets.” Like the sudden shrill ring of a telephone, these two songs pull listeners back to crushing reality, tarnishing what could have been a blissful mid-afternoon reverie.