Say Hi To Your Mom is saying hi to everyone.

Sometimes it’s great that an artist is blowing up. Now is one of those times. So, if you’re unfamiliar, get in now. It may be the third release of said artist, but there’s still time to climb aboard while he’s cool -- at least for the next 15 minutes or so.


Ferocious Mopes, available June 7th

Say Hi To Your Mom is a boy named Eric. So reads the introduction of the copyright info on each of his three albums. He writes splendidly clever lyrics to accompany his lofi recordings -- not lofi in the sense that it’s sparse and scaled back, but rather in that he crafts all of the music himself, allegedly in his Brooklyn boudoir on a computer and simplistic binary box.

Like any self-respecting male that has made his way past pre-school, Eric digs robots. And androids. And tractor beams. He writes songs about these sorts of things. These songs make me happy.

The new Say Hi record is entitled Ferocious Mopes; as always, it’s self-produced (Euphobia is the moniker for his label), but unlike the first two offerings (Discosadness and Numbers & Mumbles), it’s actually being distributed. As in, by a company. Ryko is spreading the love and seems to be doing an okay job of it. For instance, instead of having to write Say Hi directly and/or heading to NY to pick up the album, it was waiting at KRCL this morning, just begging to be featured on the FBJ. And so it was.

I’m listening to it in its entirety for the first time now, so I cannot offer any sort of a review just yet, but I do have to offer up a big fat congratulations to Eric. Things are happening here. In addition to not-so-media-giant KRCL, other good stations are picking up on Ferocious Mopes, most notably LA’s KCRW (Morning Becomes Eclectic even!) and INDIE 103 (commercial radio even!), as well as Seattle’s KEXP, among others. Also, “Let’s talk about spaceships” from the second record is currently featured in a MTV spot.

I’d like to think that I contributed roughly to 1/2169th of Say Hi’s success, mostly for egotistical reasons. I’m always gleeful when listeners request music that I actually want to hear during my show, so imagine how happy I was when a listener requested some Say Hi To Your Mom after I had been playing it for a month or so and was well aware that the first two records were not easily procured in SLC. Ferocious Mopes is available for purchase June 7th. Or, buy it now from the website.