There’s a palpable commitment to self that permeates every Hellogoodbye album, a fearless headfirst dive into one’s own inspiration.
Where many bands who find success (“Here In Your Arms”, the first single from their debut record, is certified platinum) become beholden to the genre that first brought in their fanbase, Forrest Kline has always been more interested in following his own compass. The breezy ukulele folk-pop moments of debut album “Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!” evolved into joyous indie-punk on 2010’s “Would It Kill You?”. The band’s 3rd album “Everything is Debatable”, is a frenetic electro-dance anxiety practice in controlled chaos.
The changes Hellogoodbye make from record to record aren’t attempts to divert expectations, though they undoubtedly do. The title track of “S’Only Natural” conjures up a celebratory vision of balloons falling from the ceiling. Illuminated by sweeping disco strings, the song grooves forward with unassuming confidence, like Meryl Streep sauntering back up to the podium to grab her third Oscar of the night. Each iteration gives Kline a chance to invite the listener into a whole new world, like an older sibling excitedly showing you a new band he just discovered.
Now, as the band prepares to embark on a massive celebration of their breakout debut LP, “Zombies! Vampires! Dinosaurs! Vampires!”, they have in their pockets another set of unpredictable pop gems to add to their 20 years of making the world a more sweetly beautiful & humanly random place.
After two decades, it would be all too easy for a band to just phone it in—capitalize on the fanbase they’ve built up in that time and just make a watered-down version of themselves. Not for The Early November, however. Ever since forming in New Jersey in 2001, the band, now consisting of frontman Ace Enders and founding drummer Jeff Kummer— have constantly been striving to find the best and most definitive version of themselves. With this self-titled record, the seventh studio album of their career, the duo have come as close as is possible to doing so. It’s an album that ties the past, present and future all together, and as such, it marks what Enders calls a “period or exclamation point in our sentence”. It’s not a new beginning, per se, but nevertheless something emphatic that signifies, in Enders’ words again, “a pivotal moment” for them both.
“The initial spark of this record was frustration,” he says. “Although we are growing in many ways and it’s a beautiful thing to be able to do what we do, it was born out of feeling like you’re doing the same thing over and over again, and out of this ‘I don’t care’ mentality. Not ‘I don’t care about the world’, but really digging deep artistically and having the view that if this is it, then I want The Early November to finally have the album that’s good enough to be the self-titled album.”
“There have been so many highs and lows throughout the career of this band,” adds Kummer, “but it got very dark. And a lot of this record is coming out of that. I feel more connected to where Ace’s mind is with this record than I ever have before.” Interestingly and ironically, that synergy sprang from a more negative place.
