Hello Victor: "Whatever You Want" Review

Nearly a year after they released their debut LP, Hello Victor has unveiled their first full-length, “Whatever You Want.” The Kalamazoo band has dusted off the tracks from the LP and coupled them with its brand-new material, making for an unexpectedly fresh album. Hello Victor’s sound on “Whatever You Want” is like the soul of old-timey bayou blues reincarnated in the body of emo-indie, and smoothed over by the catchy sensibility of pop music: think Wilco meets Brand New. The unlikely juxtaposition of country and country-indie against emo and melodramatic pop allows the band to explore limitless creative territory and experiment with sounds and ideas seldom brought to the table in the realm of modern “pop music.”
    From the bleary-eyed blues of the opening track “Good Fish” through to its electrified doppleganger, album closer “Gold Fish,” Hello Victor leads us on a self-reflective rollercoaster ride through late adolescence and that awkward time that comes after it: recalling the carefree days of youth, while delving into the frustration, uneasiness and fear that adulthood presents. This notion is perhaps best presented on the album’s second track “Really Me,” which awakens listeners from the twangy opener with vocalist Eric Martin’s jaded proclamation of “Well I missed you for days and days/ but now all I miss is the days that I wasted/ while I was wasted, passed out in cold basements…” and continues to build tension as Martin’s voice rises, eventually releasing into one of  the biggest and most memorable choruses on the album.
    Bounding into the playful “Is There a Man in That Couch?” --the obligatory pop-sing-a-long and quite possibly the “catchiest” song on the album--  and then powering through  the next few tracks, the album continues to roam every corner of indie-pop terrain, reaching an apex in the final moments of the single-y “Put Your Head On Straight,” whose pop-blues guitar riff and kitschy, honky-tonk piano seem less concerned about genre-defying experimentation and more about… well, in a word: fun. From there, it’s a sullen trudge through broken-down ballad “KVK,” which , after the suicidally beautiful verses, erupts into a climactic bridge in which a chorus backs Martin’s emotionally-exhausted lamentations of “I need a break!” while the guitar part soars above it, like a soloist ad-libbing vehement hallelujahs over a gospel choir. The album’s only instrumental track, “1492” features ambient, echoing instrumentation for a foggy, spooky feel, before melting seamlessly into the noir mania of “Mermaids Are Ugly,” which vaguely recalls the percussive-sounding guitar from the verses of “That’s Typical Chelsea.”
    From country to indie to emo and back again, “Whatever You Want” is indeed that: a bona fide crowd pleaser. The album’s examination of the harsh realities of life, its throwbacks to times past, and even its good old-fashioned fun make for an interesting journey for the listener, and it seems that Hello Victor is reaching out-- and while the all-over-the-map nature of the album begs the question of whether there’s an end goal to be grasped, or if they’re just grasping at straws, this is an undeniably promising release, lightyears ahead of their own fairly recent debut work-- and, in spite of its complexity, “Whatever You Want” really asks only one question in the end: what’s next?

An alternate version of this review will appear in the August 2010 issue of Recoil Magazine.