Say Hi

Say Hi is Eric Elbogen. He lives in Seattle, WA and has been making records since 2002. His ninth, Bleeders Digest, is a record about vampires and the sequel to Say Hi To Your Mom’s Impeccable Blahs. It will be out on September 18, 2015 via Barsuk Records. A co-headline tour with Telekinesis will immediately follow. All are welcome, but please check your fangs at the door.

[Bleeders Digest is the sequel to the vampire record.]

Vampires. Does there exist a species more mysterious, slandered, glorified and misunderstood? The answers to all of those questions and more. Tonight. In this bio. It was 2006 when we last checked in with vampire biographer and dad-joke comedian Eric Elbogen (he’s mostly been devoting time to his slacker-guitar / synth-pop ‘band’ Say Hi). Back then he’d taken his exposé deep behind the trenches of post-Buffy vampire life (death?) with his record Impeccable Blahs. There, he found a culture ripe with individuals as complex, moral, stupid and romantic as their human counterparts. They just happened to get their sustenance from drinking blood.

But that was before the complications the Twilight series introduced. Suddenly, things were different. Garlic wasn’t really a thing any more, mirrors couldn’t be relied upon to not have reflections and, gasp, apparently the cloud cover of the Pacific Northwest was enough to give them a we-can-now-walk-around-in-the-sunlight loophole? Let’s just say things didn’t really sit quite right with the vast majority of blood suckers. They rebelled. Subtly at first. But, before us humans knew it, they’d infiltrated the very fabric of our society.

Bleeders Digest is their story. It’s polaroids of their patience, resilience and wrath. In opening track “The Grass Is Always Greener,” the vampires are content with coexisting until the song’s protagonist cartoonishly hurls a giant boulder at them (thanks a lot, Jenny). By the time we reach the chugging anthem “Pirates Of The Cities, Pirates Of The Suburbs,” the fang-ed demons have driven most of us from our homes in a bloody wash of brute force and Darwinian eminent domain.

But all is not lost. Behind closed doors, some vague but jovial remnants of humanity sprout anew. They’d never show it to the outside world, but mansion-roommates Aldo and Tina fill their daylight hours sailing sofas and penning crosswords for the New York Times in “Creatures Of The Night.” It’s a fun distraction from the necking they’ll do once the sun goes down … Which actually brings us to our next point.

Is there a better metaphor for intimacy than the vampire? The sharp teeth and fluids, the romance of eternity. Besides, it wouldn’t be a Say Hi record without some good stories of lovin’. Throughout Bleeders, we see things from the vampire’s perspective. On “It’s A Hunger,” our protagonist literally starves for what the female gender offers to all five of his senses. Elsewhere, as on “Galaxies Will Be Born,” the seduction of immortality is eclipsed only by the tenderness of the act of turning, itself. And so, from his tiny home-studio in Seattle, WA, Say Hi updates the vampire genre with another chapter via eleven rump-shaking vignettes and a giant still-beating heart.