Say Hi To Your Mom - Numbers & Mumbles

Ah, Say Hi To Your Mom. A band found through general work-and-internet-fueled silliness. We typed "sayhitoyourmom.com" into a web browser one day to see if it worked and up came this band, which surprisingly was pretty good.

Numbers & Mumbles (Amazon.com) is not the group's (well, E. Elbogen's) latest - that one is Ferocious Mopes - but it's a good representation of their (his) sound. Elbogen is a very soft-spoken singer, almost like a softer Rivers Cuomo, and the music is fairly straightforward indie rock stuff. You've got your bleepy synth in the background, your jangly-but-not-too-jangly guitar, your melodic drumming that focuses less on cymbal work and some fairly simple yet inventive bass lines. The lyrics, though, are what sets this band apart. Take, for example, track 7, But She Beat My High Score:

There's a flame, there's a spark
But she beat my high score
So say goodbye, there's the door
I can't see you anymore

The tracks verge on the silly but they're all pretty heartfelt (and that seems to be the key to indie, IMHO) and really quite nerdy. Full tracks off the album - Hooplas Involving Circus Tricks, Let's Talk About Spaceships, and Super - are available at the band's website. Definitely worth a listen. The cover of I'm So Tired is really good too.