Hellogoodbye - Hellogoodbye

Genre rock Publisher Drive-Thru Records External Links Hellogoodbye Drive-Thru Records

Hellogoodbye are simply too young; their name is taken from an old Saved By The Bell episode, and the first song on their debut EP samples an IM talk notification (very disconcerting if you're listening to the record through your computer). Still, they can't help it. The group has been together for two years, but the quartet have been Californian schoolmates from an early age, eventually forming a band around lead vocalist/guitarist Forrest Kline's charming little songs about teen love. Hellogoodbye was given away for free through their record company's website, where it was downloaded an impressive 350,000 times. Now, it has been given a full CD release.

"Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn" sets the tone for the whole EP; the obligatory guitar, mixed in with keyboards that sound like a defective Nintendo Entertainment System, ever-so-slightly vocoded vocals, and lots of little samples littered on the way. "Call and Return" is similar, mixing teen insecurity with the NES-chic synths and infectious hand-claps. There's nothing radically new about these songs, but the odd sampling techniques make them sound fresh and exciting.

"Bonnie Taylor Shakedown" appears twice on the EP, coming back at the end for a 2004 remix, which sounds rougher and faster than the original. Either way, though, this is once again highly enjoyable synthpop. Lyrics like "Visit you at Baskin Robbins all the time / To let you know that I am yours and you are mine," might be a little sickly, but I can't be too hard on a song that includes "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean" for its chorus.

"Jesse Buy Nothing…" is the let-down track. The band admit that it's just a joke (the lyrics sheet for the song simply says "Unintelligible German Screaming"), but it is awful; parts of it sound like an unwise attempt to sound like the Beatie Boys' "Fight For Your Right To Party", while the rest is just very annoying. At three minutes, it overstays its welcome quite considerably.

Thankfully, the final song of the EP, "Dear Jamie…Sincerely Me" is good enough to make you forget all about the previous monstrosity. It's about the awkwardness of writing a love letter; whether to write in pencil, or whether printer ink is impersonal (a helpful tip, from experience: never go with the printer ink. Pen or pencil should be your only options), and the narrator of the song is constantly worrying whether he'll be rejected for "other folks who've got more to say." It's really sweet, and an an interesting touch is that when the lyrics come to a natural conclusion, the song doesn't end. Instead, it continues for another four minutes with an instrumental driven by a simple synth melody, gently fading out to the sounds of Californian traffic. I like to think of it as the character in the song actually going and delivering the letter.

As a debut EP, Hellogoodbye shows a lot of promise. Their first full album is scheduled to come out in May 2005, and if they can control their love of novelty tracks, it should be worth waiting for.