The Early November and Hellogoodbye at The Vogue in Indianapolis on Sunday, March 8, 2026!

The Early November

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After two decades, it would be all too easy for a band to just phone it in—capitalize on the fanbase they’ve built up in that time and just make a watered-down version of themselves. Not for The Early November, however. Ever since forming in New Jersey in 2001, the band, now consisting of frontman Ace Enders and founding drummer Jeff Kummer, has constantly been striving to find the best and most definitive version of itself. With this self-titled record, the seventh studio album of their career, the duo have come as close as is possible to doing so. It’s an album that ties the past, present, and future all together, and as such, it marks what Enders calls a “period or exclamation point in our sentence”. It’s not a new beginning, per se, but nevertheless something emphatic that signifies, in Enders’ words again, “a pivotal moment” for them both.

“The initial spark of this record was frustration,” he says. “Although we are growing in many ways, and it’s a beautiful thing to be able to do what we do, it was born out of feeling like you’re doing the same thing over and over again, and out of this ‘I don’t care’ mentality. Not ‘I don’t care about the world’, but really digging deep artistically and having the view that if this is it, then I want The Early November to finally have the album that’s good enough to be the self-titled album.”

“There have been so many highs and lows throughout the career of this band,” adds Kummer, “but it got very dark. And a lot of this record is coming out of that, but we’re still here with a collection of brand new songs, and it feels right. I feel more connected to where Ace’s mind is with this record than I ever have before.”

Interestingly and ironically, that synergy sprang from a more negative place. Because at a time when all these nostalgic festivals, tours, and events were springing up to celebrate the emo/punk/post-hardcore scenes that The Early November had been a part of/associated with, the band was either ignored or overlooked. But rather than succumb to feelings of defeatism or inadequacy, resignation or disappointment, Enders and Kummer instead used it as inspiration.

“I remember very specifically what really locked us in together was when all these festivals were starting to get announced and weren’t included,” says Enders. “Jeff and I would look at each other every time and say, ‘How come we’re not getting this?’ Or we’d be about to get an offer, but then it falls through at the last minute. And after that happened on repeat, we just decided, ‘You know what? If we’re going to do this, we’re not going to care about any of these artificial stamps of approval.’ So the two of us were fired up, because we felt we had something to prove again. Then we went to do the record, and we were just so in tune with where we both were creatively.”

“I feel the thing that connected us,” says Kummer, “was that we’d had something very special that we’d put our stamp on when we were younger in this business, but when you see things come around again and you get left out of a community you thought you were a part of, it hurts. I felt personally like we were getting washed away from existence and being forgotten about, and I didn’t know why, and I couldn’t understand it. And that added to our attitude of not caring about any outside approval. And that’s where the emotion and the energy behind this album came from.”

Recorded last spring at Enders’ studio in Ocean City, NJ, The Early November ripples with those very emotions that inspired its ten songs, but also carries within it the creative freedom to experiment with that feeling shunned and instilled in them. It immediately draws you into its world with the emotive exhilaration of opener “The Empress”. It’s classic Early November—full of highs and lows, youthful turbulence and tenderness, self-reflective quietude mixed with bursts of anthemic melody—and expertly sets the scene for the tone of the record, musically and thematically. One of four songs named after tarot cards—“The Magician”, “The Fool”, and “The High Priestess” are the others—it pits innocence against experience, infusing the trademark visceral emotion of the band’s songs with a previously unmatched level of introspection.

“Maybe it’s because I’m older,” says Enders, “but when I’m in a hard place trying to figure out what the next turn in life that I have to do to keep me sane is, it’s almost like you find yourself looking at those kinds of cards. And when one’s pulled out that you don’t like or that maybe doesn’t make sense, you look into it and try to make sense of it. So it was all about grasping at anything or anybody to tell me what to do, whether that’s a mystical power or a fortune teller. A lot of these songs are struggles, trying to make sense of those very moments—of pulling a card that doesn’t reflect how you want it to reflect and isn’t what you were hoping for—and where they put you ten years down the road. It’s very much looking within and trying to replay those things that keep you up at night.”

It was writing “The Fool” that flung open the door to really explore those themes in full—the possibility of the future, but also the possibility of a future that’s not what you want. It makes for what Kummer calls an “emotionally heavy” record, but that weight is buoyed by their (self-)production. That’s something which drives home the meaning of these songs, simultaneously elevating and contradicting their lyrics, and in the process demonstrating how much The Early November have evolved as songwriters on this album. Whether that’s the glitchy electronics that underpin the soulful longing of “The Dirtiest Things” or the infectious pop hooks of the beautifully earnest “We Hang On”, the melancholy bittersweet explosion of “About Me” (which features Enders’ son on bass) or the plaintive acoustic lullaby of “It Will Always Be”—a gentle acoustic song that’s reminiscent of the band’s earlier years but imbued with the knowledge that comes with age—The Early November is a record that captures who the band have always been, but also who they’ve always wanted to be. It’s a tussle, once again, between past, present, and future. None—or perhaps all—of them win.

Hypothetically speaking, if this were the end of The Early November—if this is it, as Enders was thinking when writing these songs—it would be an incredible note on which to leave. Of course, that’s only hypothetical. The truth is that, while it was a consideration at times, this album proves the band has plenty left to give.

“It’s no secret that we’re getting old,” says Enders. “You imagine that if this exists in the same vein that it does now, then yeah, we’ll always play shows, we’ll always do one-offs. There will always be things that we do. But if it becomes unsustainable, then what more can you do? And in the process of making it, I had that mindset of ‘If this is it, I’m at least going out speaking my piece.’ That’s where we were. I don’t feel that way now, but during the creation of it, there was at least a one-second blip where we were both wondering—and then made an agreement to really rock.”

“You’re not guaranteed tomorrow,” says Kummer. “Throughout our entire career, when talking about self-titled albums, we’ve always been like ‘That’s the one where you just kill yourself.’ There are so many self-titled records where it either didn’t land or it screwed up the path of something special. Our mindset was just ‘what will be will be.’ It’s a chip on my shoulder record, but I really didn’t want to look back on this and have regrets. And I don’t have. It really feels like us.”

Hellogoodbye

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When Hellogoodbye formed in the early 2000s, they were quirky, fun-loving emo rockers from California who took as much influence from the Nintendo sound bleeps of their childhood as they did modern pop-punk. The group infused its playful brand of indie power pop with sugary sweetness, catchy dance beats, and enough energy to tire a group of five-year-olds. After signing with Drive-Thru Records and establishing themselves, they scored a big hit in 2006 with the romantic electro pop ballad "Here (In Your Arms)." Instead of following up in a similar vein, the band shifted to a lush indie pop sound on 2010's Would It Kill You?, and by the end of the decade took a leap onto the dancefloor on 2018's disco-influenced S'Only Natural, an album that saw Kline coming into his own as a crooner, and which felt like the work of an entirely different band.

Hellogoodbye, named after a quote from Saved by the Bell's Screech Powers, comprised vocalist/guitarist Forrest Kline, bassist Marcus Cole, keyboardist Jesse Kurvink, and drummer Chris Profeta. They released their self-titled EP as a free download on their label's website, and the physical album hit stores with an additional track in November 2004 on Drive-Thru (where Kline used to intern). The move worked to the band's advantage, and its music quickly spread; the single "Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn" made minor waves on MTV and garnered the band a pretty notable following for having only a handful of songs to its name.

Extensive touring commenced, as they joined (which often included water guns, confetti, and costumes) bands like the Format and the All-American Rejects. The music video/live DVD OMG HGB DVD ROTFL appeared in the fall of 2005, and by the year's end the band had won the on-air MTV Dew Circuit Breakout contest, beating Over It and Tub Ring in the end. Early 2006 was spent playing sold-out nationwide dates as openers for the Academy Is... before hooking up with Motion City Soundtrack and Straylight Run in the spring for the MTVU Campus Invasion Tour. A spot on May's Bamboozle festival preceded a summer spent on the Warped Tour. All this activity ultimately led up to the release of their highly anticipated full-length Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!, which finally hit stores that August. The album was a chart success as "Here (In Your Arms)" raced up the singles chart.

After more touring, the band began to run into some problems. First came the departure of Jesse Kurvink, then more lineup shuffles and a protracted lawsuit led to a lack of product from the band until a self-released single ("When We First Met") arrived in late 2009. By then, they had shifted musical direction away from emo-pop and toward a lush indie pop sound free of Auto-Tune and novelty songs. By the time they released their 2010 album, Would It Kill You?, the band consisted of Kline (who played nearly everything on the album himself), drummer Mike Nielsen, bassist Travis Head, keyboardist Joseph Marro, and guitarist Andrew Richards. The group toured after the album's release, garnering a spot on the 2011 Warped Tour. Marro left the band in early 2012, citing family issues, to be replaced by Augie Rampolla of You, Me, and Everyone We Know. Later that year, Old Friends Records signed the band and re-released Would It Kill You? with a couple of bonus tracks.

The next album was another Kline solo project apart from the drums and some horn and string parts, and brought some '80s influences to the table. Co-produced by Joe Chiccarelli, Everything Is Debatable was released in late 2013. The band headed out on tour as the opening act for Paramore and Metric, but didn't release more music until 2015, when they made a single titled "I Wanna See the States" for a geography promotion run by PBS. They then took some time off before returning in 2017 with an orchestral pop-influenced single, "Stare Into the Black," and a six-date tour playing Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! and Would It Kill You? in their entireties. Kline had begun working on the next album by this point, and he took a giant leap into the smooth-disco-with-strings-and-horns sound Hellogoodbye had dipped their toes into on Everything Is Debatable. S'Only Natural was released in October of 2018 and featured many tracks that sounded airlifted from a sweaty discotheque circa 1978, along with some that had a strong modern R&B influence.

THE EARLY NOVEMBER & HELLOGOODBYE: 20 YEARS YOUNG

SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2026

21+

THE VOGUE THEATRE

INDIANAPOLIS, IN

TICKETS AT THEVOGUE.COM

PLEASE NOTE:

THIS SHOW IS GENERAL ADMISSION AND SEATING IS NOT PROVIDED. YOU MUST BE 21+ TO ENTER THE VENUE WITH A VALID FORM OF IDENTIFICATION. ALL TICKETS ARE NON-REFUNDABLE. TWO FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION MAY BE REQUIRED FOR ENTRY.