Artist:
HELLOGOODBYE
Label:
DRIVE THRU RECORDS
Video:
“HERE (IN YOUR ARMS)”
Director:
Scott Culver
Add Date:
August 25, 2006

Greetings to all my friends in music video land! It’s Andy Gesner and the staff from HIP Video Promo with another outstanding video for you to check out. Forrest Kline was just a shy intern at Drive-Thru Records when Richard and Stefanie Reines first heard the recordings he’d made on his home computer. Legend has it that he didn’t even play the songs for the Drive-Thru bosses himself: a mutual friend told them “you’ve got to hear this” and spun them the tracks. Like most everybody else who’s since heard Kline’s joyous hybrid of pop-punk, new wave, and dance music, they fell in love. Thus, Hellogoodbye was born: a bedroom synthpop project that has since become ferocious enough to play the Warped Tour, and maybe even teach the guitar bands a thing or two about partying and rocking out.

Superficially, Hellogoodbye has little in common with other Drive-Thru Records bands: Jesse Kurvink’s elastic synthesizer is most often the lead instrument, and Kline’s guitar parts owe much to Duran Duran-style pop-funk. But beyond the hyperkinetic arrangements and the clever synth glitches, Hellogoodbye writes sturdy songs that could easily be rendered on acoustic guitar. And Kline sings them with an uncommon emotional intensity. His subject matter – the sweep of young love, crushes, pulses racing, driving in girls’ cars, the bittersweet end of summer – is as lovingly detailed as any pop punk band’s take on teenage heartbreak. So Hellogoodbye may sound like New Order or even sophisticated Daft Punk, but they feel like Jimmy Eat World, and that’s been good enough to make them wildly popular with the Warped Tourcrowds (their Myspace page reports nearly ten million listens to their songs).

The group won MTV2’s Dew Circuit Breakout and landed themselves an opening slot for The Academy Is… and Panic! At The Disco, as well as the MTV2 Campus Invasion Tour with Motion City Soundtrack and Straylight Run but even before that, they’d already gotten serious face time on The Real World: Austin and shared stages with All-American Rejects and The Format. Ever since the band’s highly successful national tour to support their self-titled debut EP, anticipation for their first full-length has been palpable. Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! delivers on the quartet’s promise: it’s a non-stop party; eleven exuberant and crisply-written techno-pop songs with wildly romantic lyrics and killer performances. “All Time Lows” rides on a wiggly synth line before crashing into its enraptured verses; “Stuck To You” and “Homewrecker” are artfully-arranged funk workouts. “Here (In Your Arms)”, the lead single from Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!, might be the first song ever to bridge the gap between the mosh pit and the disco floor: it coos and wails like classic pop punk, but the beat is vintage OMD. Tommie Sunshine is already spinning out club mixes of the song – though if you ask us, we figure you could just play the album cut at a club, right in between Cher and Beyoncé, and you’d barely skip a beat.

Back in 2004, Hellogoodbye made quite a splash with their video for “Call ‘N’ Return”; the rhythm section, dressed in fake moustaches, played a mock game of tennis against the frontmen. That whimsy is back for the clip to “Here (In Your Arms)”. Directed by Scott Culver, the video finds the band in summer camp in 1991. Culver and Hellogoodbye plays it for maximum nostalgia value, focusing on the bandmembers’ attempts to get kissed. But there’s a twist: some of the councilors have a demonic secret of their own!

Here at HIP Video Promo, it is our great pleasure to present to you such an amazing band like Hellogoodbye! We also couldn’t be happier to be working with our dear friends at Drive Thru Records! We are here for you to make sure that all of your Hellogoodbye needs are met in a timely fashion. We will have plenty of Hellogoodbye goodies and copies of Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! on hand for on air giveaways and contests. We will also be able to set up interviews with the band when they come through your town! If you need more info, call Andy Gesner at 732-613-1779 or e-mail us at info@HIPVideoPromo.com. You can also visit www.DriveThruRecords.com to find out more about Hellogoodbye.

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