The Stranger:
Back when Ballard resident Eric Elbogen’s one-man band was called Say Hi to Your Mom and recording entire albums about vampires and science fiction, it was easy to dismiss his act as merely cute. But then Elbogen decided to leave Your Mom out of it and trade the sometimes-overwrought geekery for less- idiosyncratic indie pop on 2007’s The Wishes and the Glitch. Now recording as simply Say Hi, Elbogen has followed that album with Oohs & Aahs, his sixth record and first for local label Barsuk. It is both his best album yet and—as odious and overused as this term is—his most mature.