Say Hi

Say Hi
@ The Beachland Tavern, Cleveland, February 25
by Andrew Clayman
Published (with edits) in The Scene (Cleveland), February 2008



Somewhere in between switching his indie-pop operations from Brooklyn to Seattle, Eric Elbogen apparently realized that his band had a stupid name. It’s an epiphany that still awaits the brain-trusts of bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Cute Is What We Aim For, and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, but in the meantime, some solace can be taken from the fact that Say Hi To Your Mom is now simply Say Hi—making the acronym SHTYM officially obsolete.

The geographical switch and moniker-trimming might suggest a clean slate of sorts for Elbogen, who’s been Say Hi’s sole, recurring member since the “band’s” 2002 inception. However, his new album, The Wishes and the Glitch, doesn’t stray too far from the murky, computer pop of SHTYM’s first four, self-released records. The riffs still recall Death Cab, and the synths still bow to Stephin Merritt. If anything, the difference between Say Hi and Say Hi To Your Mom might be the immediacy of the songs. Elbogen has a little extra bounce in his step on new tracks like “Toil and Trouble” and “Zero to Love,” and “Northwestern Girls” sounds like one of those intense Arcade Fire ditties. There’s even a female backup singer who pops up from time to time, completing the album’s indie-pop requirements.

For further help in understanding the pop-cultural dynamics that define Say Hi, it might help to know that the band’s cover art— aside from being Easter egg colored—usually includes drawings of robots, and that their fourth LP, 2006’s Impeccable Blahs, is entirely about vampires. What more needs to be said?