Earlier this year, Eric Elbogen announced he was returning to his long-running indie rock project Say Hi for the new album Caterpillar Centipede after retiring to focus on his “experimental-art / sci-fi rap project” Werewolf Diskdrive. He further tells us:

I started writing Caterpillar Centipede last year, post retirement, when the Kickstarter for the early Say Hi To Your Mom vinyl was happening. I hadn’t expected the campaign to get funded, to be honest, but when things started rolling, it felt like a nice thing to do would be to make one more Say Hi record, as a sort of farewell. It had been a long time since I’d picked up a guitar, but once I dove in, I found myself enthralled with writing rock songs again. By the time I sat down to record everything, it was clear that this would be a nostalgic-sounding Say Hi record and I kept thinking, hey, I bet people who like that one old Say Hi song will like this one too. In the end, among the external backdrop of what was (is) happening in the world, my inconsequential internal monologue climaxed with the following thought: I really liked writing these songs and I think that people will like them. If they do, I will have distracted them (ever so briefly) from the constant barrage of terrible news in their Twitter and Facebook feeds. That seems like reason enough to say “F it, I’m getting the ‘band’ back together.” So here we are. Please enjoy!

We're now premiering a stream of the full album, and it is indeed a nostalgic-sounding Say Hi record. As shown on recent single "Green With Envy," there's also a riffy '70s punk influence coming through on a few songs (that one, plus "Mathematicians" and "I Just Wanna Go Home"). It's a really cool record for Say Hi, and a good mix of the trademark Say Hi sound with some other stuff thrown in -- definitely not just a retread of his past material. Listen to the whole thing below.

The album comes out this Friday (9/7) via Eric's own Euphobia Records label (pre-order). His living room tour also starts soon. All dates and remaining tickets (including a sold-out NYC show on 10/3) here.