Like Prince changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, Eric Elbogen's switch from the juvenile mouthful Say Hi to Your Mom to simply Say Hi marked a significant transition. While the Purple One's new moniker was willfully inscrutable, the motivation for Elbogen's truncation to Say Hi was obvious: At a certain age, it starts to look a little immature to identify yourself with a "your mom" joke (especially while singing power-pop songs about spaceships, vampires, snowcones, and puppies). And so, since 2008's The Wishes and the Glitch, his first as Say Hi, Elbogen has been settling comfortably into indie pop middle age, slowing down his tempos and digging for deeper veins of sad-sackery.
Not that Elbogen has matured beyond pop music's bread-and-butter concerns: girls, the absence thereof, and what to do about them. Indeed, um, uh oh's best songs stick to the old romantic tropes. "Dots on Maps" finds Elbogen typically glum, reminiscing about the past while trying to reassure his girl about their future; it's a gentle but persistently catchy song, built on a simple guitar strum and decorated with a wavering flute and some well-placed glockenspiel. "All the Pretty Ones" is a slightly bitter ode, Elbogen grumbling over acoustic guitar and reverbed electric. "Take Ya' Dancin'" is about as upbeat as Say Hi get these days, its shuffling rhythm and hopeful melody enough to make the lyrics sound slightly more attractive than pathetic.
U**m, uh oh doesn't stray too far from the path set on Wishes and 2009's Oohs & Aahs, but there is a notable new development: Elbogen's got the blues, and on "Devils", "My, How It Comes", and "Shiny Diamonds", not just in sentiment but in style. On "Diamonds" he gives the kind of pinched electric guitar solo that one imagines being played with eyes shut, lip curled, face scrunched into a grimace. Not that you'd mistake the indie rocker for a blind bluesman: When Elbogen sings about having the devil on his back, over a politely grooving bass line and shaky percussion, it's not a possessed howl but a resigned whimper. On "My, How It Comes", he sounds hollowed out against the song's organ buzz, heavy piano chords, and enlivening synth coda. Elbogen's voice isn't an instrument of great range, but he knows how to work its sweetest spot, a low, breathy baritone that, on the downcast verses of "Posture, Etc." begins to sound almost like Arcade Fire's Win Butler at his most muted.
These are not all indelible tunes-- probably half of them will fade from your memory shortly after a listen-- but they are pleasant enough while they last, and with half the tracks clocking in under the three-minute mark (and the others barely breaking it), nothing on um, uh oh overstays its welcome.
