Like fellow New Yorkers Nada Surf, Say Hi (abbreviated from the days when they were better known as Say Hi to Your Mom) has signed to the Seattle indie label Barsuk, spent a fair bit of time recording in the Jet City — frontman Eric Elbogen, who essentially is Say Hi, has since relocated from Brooklyn to the Pacific Northwest — and hurtled relentlessly toward a brand of fast-forward quirk-rock that might've been labeled "power pop" in a previous, more enlightened age, but these days gets lumped into the big pig-pile sloppily known as "indie rock." This isn't entirely fair to Elbogen. All one has to do is spin through his sixth album in seven years, Oohs & Aahs, to find radio-ready gems such as "November Was White, November Was Grey" — paeans to classic pop built around instantly hummable choruses ("I'll feel better when the winter's gone") that rub the sad and happy sticks together to make fire in that inimitable Zombies/Beach Boys/Cars sort of way.

Elbogen spends a good portion of this album unapologetically writing about girls and what it's like to be a pop musician trying to appeal to them — "Elouise" deploys an epic guitar riff… read more »