If all you remember of Hellogoodbye is that song "Here (In Yours Arms)" with the cute video and the emotune vocals, you missed out on something pretty great. The group's 2010 album Would It Kill You? is a near perfect modern pop album that draws from bands like the Zombies and Kinks, but also has a modern punch that isn't too far from their emo-pop roots. No Auto-Tune though. This time Forrest Kline sings his sweetly romantic lyrics from the heart and not through a machine. Not that Auto-Tune is inherently evil, but it's nice to hear his voice unfiltered and true. The album was reissued at the end of last year by Old Friends Records, and they are working on something new and undoubtedly great right now! We thought it would be a good time to check in with Forrest Kline and see what he'd have on his Poplist.

First, here's the insanely charming video for one of my favorite songs of the past ten years....
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHEx9ofx7Qk[/youtube]

 
Two years ago or so, our sometimes drummer, Aaron Flora, turned me on to Radiolab. Since then it's taken an UNREAL amount of my time, inspired me in broad ways, sparked up a bunch of my favorite conversations on long tour drives. When I'm driving around in my VW TDI (with an Obama sticker on the bumper) listening to NPR's Radiolab, I feel simultaneously alive with the sense of wonder of life and reduced to a liberal cartoon.

Time
I know that I'll die one day still not understanding time. It being so inherently un-understandable, I would think listening to a podcast about it might just be frustrating, but it’s not. It rules, you guys.

 
Unraveling Bolero
This one gave me a new paranoia, that allowed me to fancy myself a creative artist at the cost of losing my mind. They talk to a couple people from all walks o' life who wind up quitting their day jobs as accountants or lawyers, begin making increasingly feverish and repetitive art, and eventually go totally bonkers. The whole feverish-art-creation phase is just the first phase of their descent into madness.

 
Stochasticity
Hey, thanks for the new worldview, Radiolab. This one’s all about chance, randomness and its meaning. A few stories that feel really miraculous at first are reduced to the statistics of their likelihood. In essence, the concept is: if you flip a coin 1000 times you'll get a random mix of heads and tails, but if you flip it long enough you'll start to get crazy streaks like 1000 heads in a row.

 
Bliss
This one was just on my mind because it’s the most recent one, also notable because they don't really talk about bliss as all. They give the story of a German dude named "blitz" who changed his name to bliss and then they just reflect on the beautiful experience of taking mushrooms, for the last half hour to forty five minutes.

 
Loops
Part of what rules about Radiolab, aside from the big concepts and cool audio editing, is how broadly they tackle topics. 'Loops' has got Kristen Shaw doing her 'is a horse' sketch, a paranoia-inducing story about a lady stuck in a mental loop, some corroding and really pretty tape loops, and some never ending math.