Eric Elbogen of Say Hi

You (don't) know this guy.

Based on sundry articles penned about Eric Elbogen, Say Hi’s creator and sole permanent member, he’s an inert character whose minutiae make for great material.

A Seattle Weekly story portrayed Elbogen as a perfectionist when it came to professionalism—akin to “the Donald Trump of indie rock,” based on how he’s freely fired past tourmates—with an “easygoing aura” in person. He also comes off as slightly awkward and uncertain of how to respond to compliments. Two Pitchfork record reviews of his project from back when it was called Say Hi to Your Mom fill in more colors: He’s a good hook-writer, but also noncommittal, nerdy, careerist, and a haplessly muddled lyricist.

Maybe there’s something about the nature of his music that makes him especially susceptible to discussions of his character. Even if it can get intense, Say Hi’s indie pop carries the delicate, intimate quality of something obsessively constructed at home. His voice accentuates that atmosphere well, being breathy, raw and uneven.

“You know, I agree with 50 percent of [stuff written about me],” he says. “In journalism, a lot of times things are taken out of context. I can definitely be a grumpy person, and a lot of the material on the Say Hi records are heartbreak, sad-bastard stuff, but I am generally a friendly person.” He quickly recalls one of the more ridiculous things he’s read about himself—that he’s a recluse residing in his mom’s attic (“I don’t live in the same city as my mother,” he says)—but has a tougher time identifying something accurate.

“Can someone who doesn’t know you well truly portray you accurately? I don’t think so. I’m just a dude. I’m just a music nerd who loves making and playing music. Sometimes, I can be a shy, quiet person and often that gets misread as me being a mean person.”

Elbogen doesn’t seem particularly fond of how much attention is given to him over the music itself, but it’s awfully difficult to ignore the multi-instrumentalist when the material about his creative process is so good. The Seattle-based musician is a driven songwriter who generally blocks out eight months a year to produce an album, working for 10 to 12 hours a day. He admits that his productivity comes from writing alone. He’s released seven Say Hi LPs since 2002, with the latest being January’s Um, Uh Oh. The result has been a lot of identifiable growth. “The first record sounds like what a 23-year-old kid would write,” he says, with 2008’s The Wishes and the Glitch marking the turning point toward maturity.

A couple of his older tracks tackled romance and vampires, slyly nodding to Buffy (“These Fangs”), and conversations about spaceships to avoid big-picture relationship issues (“Let’s Talk About Spaceships”). It wouldn’t be right to say he’s wholly ditched his quirky geekiness—“Bluetime” from The Wishes champions the voluptuous Ms. Pac-Man—but his subject matter has been upgraded. “There’s a lot of metaphor on [Um, Uh Oh],” he says. “I don’t feel like I’m dancing with the devil literally, like the singer in ‘Devils.’ I’m not driving around the country [looking] for a more interesting city like the protagonist in ‘Dots on Maps.’”

This points to another important aspect of his persona: For as much attention is paid to Elbogen’s character, Say Hi tries to evade the trappings of reality. “It’s inevitable that music will reflect my personality to some extent, but I put quite a bit of effort into making records that are not a reflection.” Ignoring the blatantly heartfelt, his interest lies in “the mysterious and the weird” because it represents a sense of escapism.
He might be right—maybe we shouldn’t be discussing him at all. “People are inherently pretty boring,” he says. “I’m a pretty boring person.”

The Drums

NYC band are happy to be miserable

Posted // May 3,2012 - “Let’s Go Surfing” is so terribly deceptive. The track, which appears on The Drums’ Summertime! EP (2009) and their self-titled debut LP (2010), yielded the first burst of attention for the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based band—and rightfully so. “Wake up/ It’s a beautiful morning/ Honey, while the sun is still shining,” croons Jonathan Pierce in his kindest possible voice, just as the garage-pop ditty begins to beam rays of optimism. Like an adolescent aching for a day off, The Drums’ singer, with a lean, boyish frame (and a voice to match), wants nothing more than to be set free. “Oh, mama/ I wanna go surfing,” he shouts in the irresistible chorus. “Oh, mama/ I don’t care about nothing.”
All the key elements in “Let’s Go Surfing”—a catchy, whistled melody; a genial hook; and minimal amounts of reverb that give the track a surf-rock veneer—espouse simplicity, joy and youthfulness. It perfectly captures the idealism and carefree quality associated with the season noted in the title of Summertime!, and that notion has only bolstered comparisons between The Drums’ work and The Beach Boys’ feel-good surf pop.
While the lovable song has become The Drums’ calling card, it misrepresents the band as a whole. As it so happens, The Drums have never surfed (and don’t know how); they’re not into surf pop, surf rock or The Beach Boys, and they aren’t really happy-go-lucky types. Hell, actually going surfing was probably never much of a priority for the group. Instead, the activity’s whimsy just represented a temporary escape from the everyday miseries of reality. “I wrote the lyrics for the first album as if I were 10 years younger,” Pierce said in an interview with NME. “That’s why everything’s translated from a teenage standpoint. But with this record, it’s very much now.”
“This record” refers to the pop-gone-post-punk of Portamento, a sophomore album ruled by spare guitars, downbeat synths and Pierce’s pained refrains. The singer’s troubles extend past the standard romantic stuff; he also has cash-flow issues, is concerned by life’s meaninglessness, and is overwhelmed with malaise. “The things I used to feel,” he declares on “Searching for Heaven,” “I don’t feel anymore.”
The tortured band members behind Portamento are indicative of the true Drums. “Jon and I are both naturally pretty blue in general,” guitarist/keyboardist Jacob Graham says. Before the time they wrote Portamento, the act existed under the radar. The success of “Let’s Go Surfing” catapulted them into the world of a professional band, spawning turmoil both publicized (the group went from four members to three) and not. Their dour side began to emerge. To match these changes musically, they scaled back the reverb and made sounds that Graham describes as “a little more blunt.”
The Drums’ latest songs are steeped in dramatic agony, but Graham is pragmatic about their benefits. The recent surge of pop songs that celebrate the concept of celebrating, such as The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling,” confuses him, as he can’t see the point of making happy music just to make happy music. In turn, he finds something uplifting about depressing work. “When I was a kid and first discovered music I felt really connected to, it was really sad music. It didn’t keep me sad or make me more sad or anything like that,” he says. “I felt almost happy when I heard it because it felt like there was someone else out there who felt the same way I was feeling.”
Graham won’t rule out the possibility of his band returning to the lighter fare of “Let’s Go Surfing,” but their actual perspective and tone is “a bit irrelevant.” “I think it could go either way,” he says. “What’s important to me is that our songs kind of become more meaningful.”