Do a bit of research into Hellogoodbye and you’d think you had their card pretty well marked – from California; on a cool indie label; appeared on MTV’s Real World; played on the Vans Warped tour. Bring on the indie punk guitars boys. It’s quite a surprise then to find out that they actually sound like Steps. Well, not quite, but the opening tracks ‘All Of Your Love’ and ‘Here (In Your Arms)’ are awfully pop, more synth than electric guitar and swathed in dance beats and vocal effects.
Somewhere buried amongst it all, you can just about make out a workaday emo anthem but it has a very faint pulse. It’s not all like that; after this opening blast the record settles down into what we might have expected – quirky pop punk with lots of keyboards – but offers very little in the way of excitement. ‘Baby, It’s Fact’ has a Jellyfish feel to it and isn’t half bad, apart from that it’s pretty poor. So poor, in fact, that you begin to wonder if the Venga Boys meet Fallout Boy idea wasn’t a bad one. Then the truly unworthy ‘I Saw It On Your Keyboard’ pitches up and such thoughts are banished. Hellogoodbye – they couldn’t have picked a better name if they’d tried.