San Diego Reader

For his seventh studio session, homegrown rock star Jon Foreman reaches into his bag of tricks, pulls out all the hooks, and assembles them in a strategic fashion beneath an arsenal of lyrical bombs that detonate in the battlefield of the mind.

While most youths point fingers at society, the government, the law, or ex-lovers, the Switchfoot front man points the finger at himself. This is evident in the hit single "Mess of Me" and on tracks such as "Free" and "Yet.” When Foreman turns his finger at the audience, it is to call out and demolish mediocrity and self-inflicted limitations on tracks such as "The Sound" and "Bullet Soul.”

Hello Hurricane’s set list takes on a similar shape of previous albums -- rock to ballad to tech-pop -- with a slight push at the edges, but the difference on this album is its production. After excusing themselves from Columbia/Sony, Switchfoot decided to record and produce the tracks in their newly built StudioX in San Diego. Then they announced that lowercase people records (their own independent label) was licensing the album to Atlantic Records. Later, producer Mike Elizondo was brought on board for the last few months of recording at Phantom Studios in Westlake, CA.

• Album title: Hello Hurricane
• Artist: Switchfoot
• Label: Atlantic/lower case people
• Songs: (1) Needle And Haystack Life (2) Mess Of Me (3) Your Love Is A Song (4)The Sound (John M Perkin's Blues) (5) Enough To Let Me Go (6) Free (7) Hello Hurricane (8) Always (9) Bullet Soul (10) Yet (11) Sing It Out (12)Red Eyes