Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Most people remember the group of kids in high school who were in a band. They bragged about it around the ladies, hoping it would give them a coolness factor their peers didn't have. Forrest Kline and his friends, who make up powerpop band Hellogoodbye, were those guys.

While Kline, the band's lead singer, guitarist and songwriter, said the guys originally started the band to get girls, he admitted it didn't exactly help.

"We didn't really get any," he said. "It was just like we were just making up fun joke songs. 'Oh, I'll record a song for this girl and see if she likes it.'"

But after high school, those same songs that failed to woo the band's classmates, actually helped create a small local following for the band in its hometown of Huntington Beach, Calif. And now, almost seven years after the band wrote its first song, "Bonnie Taylor Shakedown (2k1)," Hellogoodbye has accomplished what most high school bands only dream of.

With a stint on the Vans Warped Tour and tours with The All-American Rejects and Motion City Soundtrack under its belt, Hellogoodbye has built a substantial career for a bunch of guys who didn't go to college. But above and beyond all others, Kline said college gigs, such as the one the band will play tonight in the Grand Ballroom in Stamp Student Union, are his favorite. Perhaps it's because the band used the time they would have spent in college to become rockers instead.

"We just try to have fun out there," Kline said of the band's performing philosophy. "If we go out there and we're bored then … people will probably be bored too."

Kline said it's "super weird" to think of how far he's come since the first time he mixed a song on his home computer.

"I didn't think I was embarking on my future or anything," he said.

But mixing songs is exactly what his future had in store. The band is currently working on its second album, due out this fall. Ironically, the computerized pop-rock group, who mixed its first EP, Hellogoodbye, on Kline's home computer, never had a garage band sound even though the band mixes its albums in a makeshift studio Kline built in his garage.

According to Kline, who jokingly described the band's sound as whatever the most popular song in America is right now, the computerized mixing is what makes the band's unique brand of upbeat synth rock stand out from other, more generic rock bands.

"Instead of going into a room and jamming with four dudes, you just kind of meet at a computer," he said. "That, I think, led to what was created in a big way."

And while they may still be honing their sound in the garage, Hellogoodbye is certainly not stuck in the past.

"I'm just moving on and trying to make up new stuff," Kline said of the band's already-modern sound evolving even more on its next album.

"It's a lot cooler to be on the edge of something somewhat new or whatever than just to be like a complete revival in a band, like [Australian-rockers] Jet or something," Kline said. "To be like, 'Oh, we're just trying to sound like something that was 30 years ago.' It's cool to do something kind of original."

Hellogoodbye performs tonight in the Grand Ballroom of Stamp Student Union. Tickets cost $10 for students and $15 for non-students. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show begins at 7:30 p.m.

courtney.pomeroy@yahoo.com

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