Some time last year, prior to the release of his fifth album, The Wishes and the Glitch, Eric Elbogen shortened the name of his project from Say Hi to Your Mom to just Say Hi. Call it growing up, refining the message, or whatever you want to, but it's easy to see why a guy might eventually want to leave the playground insult behind for something more all-embracing. Now based in Seattle, Elbogen is still making music for pocket-sized arenas, cramming big gestures into a small sound.
Oohs & Aahs fits into his usual semi-hi-fi aesthetic, at least in terms of the way the arrangements are presented, but there's something off about the way the vocals are recorded on almost the whole record. They get almost completely lost when listening on headphones because the echo applied to them makes them so indistinct-- they flutter around and the melody blurs off the beat. On speakers, his voice sounds better, but it's still not pleasing. Elbogen also adopts a most mush-mouthed approach, requiring the listener to crane an awful lot to hear the lyrics that are so central to his music. This isn't another quasi-concept record about vampires like 2006's Impeccable Blahs, but still, comprehensibility is nice.
It's too bad, because many of these songs have quite a bit going for them otherwise. Opener "Elouise" is as good an example as any, opening with a good fuzz bass part and some tolling piano chords before the big guitar texture kicks in. And then, well, there's some tuneful mumbling from a guy who sounds like he has marbles in his mouth, something about the high 90s FM station or something. As big a hang-up as that is, Elbogen sings more clearly through the echo on much on the rest of the album, and he has some good stuff going on here, like the pointillist horn theme that opens the propulsive "Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh", the little piano eruption on "Hallie and Henry", and the big, almost majestic keyboard theme that underpins the floaty almost-anthem "Maurine". These songs are concise and to the point, sometimes to their own detriment: "Dramatic Irony" feels like it's just getting going when it suddenly ends.
The album's highlight is "One, Two... One", if only for the brilliant chorus that comes tumbling out of nowhere over the vaguely 1980s instrumental bed. Elbogen harmonizes with himself, and the excess reverb hurts the precision a bit, but it still injects an exciting little whiff of jazz into the song. Fans of mid-fi one-man indie bands and anyone who loved Elbogen's when he was still Say Hi To Your Mom will undoubtedly find things to like about it, but Oohs & Ahs is ultimately a decent record that's weighed down a bit by some puzzling sonics.
