Earn This

This is part 8 of the Relient K retrospective

(I wrote a review of Forget and Not Slow Down about a week ago. Since then, I’ve been doing some research on the album’s origins, and I believe the results make it much more moving and devastating.)

I generally like to keep my nose out of other people’s business, but because  Forget and Not Slow Down is such an emotional album, I figured it could be valuable to try and figure out what events caused these emotions to better relate to its often abstruse lyrics. My poking around was not in vain. Here’s the story, as I understand it, but feel free to disagree with my speculation and assessment. I’ve linked to all the sources I used in reaching my conclusions.

Back story:

Matt Thiessen is generally known as one of the nicest dudes in music. He takes his Christianity seriously. Everyone was thrilled when he proposed in a most adorable way to radio host Shannon Murphy. She used her blog to keep her friends, and the world, updated on their engagement. But a few months later, she revealed that the two had split after she discovered “a few things about Matt that I just simply could not handle,” though she noted that she still believes he has an “amazingly huge heart.”

The break-up went down pretty quietly until Murphy got a new gig and started talking about an ex-boyfriend who cheated on her. Though she declined to use a name and vocation to identify who she was referring to, people made the connection.

Towards the end of the next year, Relient K’s sixth studio album came out. Thiessen says he wrote it when we went to a cabin in the woods for a couple of months to do nothing but reflect and pray and write. Forget and not Slow Down was the result, and it came out to pretty strong critical acclaim, with few media sources rating it worse than 4 out of 5 or the equivalent.

On the morning of the release on Shannon’s radio show, she directly implicated implicated [edit: this link is dead, I'm looking for another version of it, because this is the crucial piece of the puzzle] him as a cheater, although she noticeably avoids saying anything else negative about him. She also reveals some tidbits that add some serious poignancy to the album: the couple always used to travel to Savannah, GA — and there’s a song on the album called “Savannah.” Perhaps most devastatingly of all, “Baby,” a 40-second outro to Savannah, was the song Thiessen originally wrote for Murphy to play to her at their wedding.

Over the next few weeks in interviews, Thiessen frequently expanded on the album’s meaning, though he declined to delve into specific details regarding his personal situation. Of course, some fangirls refuse to believe Murphy is telling the truth because Matt is, like, so amazing. Others have taken a more reasonable view that neither of them are saints, and it’s pretty clear Matt likely betrayed her trust in some way, and they were not a perfect match anyways.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that she’s completely BS’ing and slandering Thiessen, but he’s never really disputed her claims of adultery, and a few passages in the album more or less confirm her claims. So how does this information affect the listener?

Re-interpretation

More than anything else, these details of Thiessen and Murphy’s break-up make Forget and Not Slow Down a personal and powerful album. My initial reading of the album was as a broad, over-arching look at the concept of saying goodbye and pressing on. But, after hearing Murphy talk about the album, I think there’s a lot of value in the album as a reflection on their specific relationship.

If Thiessen in fact perfidiously caused the end of his relationship, then the words of the album carry much more weight — particularly considering his saintly public image before the scandal broke out. I think there’s something poignant and ironic about the leader of the most spiritual and positive of bands committing an act of great betrayal, then having to dealing with the consequences. It gives the album very high emotional stakes and some genuine substance.

Other great RK albums have been reflective and regretful, but on smaller levels. Forget and Not Slow Down is paradigm-smashing for the band in its gravity. This was evident to a certain extent when the I interpreted the album broadly, its songs as abstractions. But, with this new backstory, it’s clear that never before has Relient K been so acute, specific, and painful. The album works much stronger as a look at Thiessen’s specific shame and regret and recovery than as a detached meditation of these concepts.

A few of the most telling passages:

A lion on his side, was it the lying or his pride which brought him down?
Once the king of beasts, but now they feast on the thoughts beneath his vacant crown
Trying to decide, was it the lying or the pride which brought it down?
To be alone, to be dethroned, believe me I know all about it now
from “Sahara”

This passage works as a general image of pride and sin, but works especially well considering the scandal and isolation surrounding Thiessen’s life. As the king of Christian rock (in terms of both quality and mainstream success), and one album removed from his biggest and happiest album, he sank to his lowest, and he’s still not sure if it was “lying or his pride which brought him down.”

Baby
It’s all that I can do to
Thank you
Cause every time you wrapped those arms around me
I felt I was home cause
Everything made sense when you were with me
from “Baby (Outro)”

Tossed off as an outro, I dismissed “Baby” as generic post-breakup pining until I learned the song’s origin as the song Thiessen wrote for Murphy to play at their wedding. What a harrowing inversion of the song’s initial concept: a bittersweet farewell at the abrupt conclusion of their relationship instead of at the beginning of their marriage. Thiessen has said in interviews that recording this album was overall a positive experience, but I can’t imagine that was true for “Baby.”

I’d rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can’t change now
If I become what I can’t accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch
Pour over me and wash my hands
Pour over me and wash my hands
from “Forget and Not Slow Down”

“Resurrect the saint from within the wretch” is the key line of the album, I think. It best sums up the album’s tone: regretful and defeated, but still looking for the right way to respond. He doesn’t shy away from the fact that he did something wrong, but he considers that the most therapeutic option is to move on rather than linger on his guilt. There’s also some nice imagery of absolution there (“Pour over me and wash my hands”) which reflects a lot of passages in the Bible.

I met the devil and I stared her in the eyes
Her hair had scales like silver serpents
I, a statue, stood there mesmerized
I took the fire escape and made it out alive

Yeah I still burn from time to time
But I’ve a healing hand against my side

Blisters on my feet I crawled back home
Frozen from the sleet, burned sand and stones
Nourished back to life by life alone
With one shake of the mane regain the throne
from “(If You Want It)”

These are the closing lyrics of the album, and they’re most beautiful Thiessen’s ever written, in my opinion. That first stanza is about as poetic and archetypal as any admission of guilt, and he follows it up not only with a re-affirmation of faith and healing (second stanza) but that dazzling coda. Those last four lines call back the lion image from “Sahara.” They also present an idea unusual in the modern rock-and-roll landscape, which tends towards angst and self-deprication: That the very act of living, even in misery, is valuable.

That’s how Forget and Not Slow Down is still a distinctly Relient K album, even as it confronts a major transgression by the band’s leader: It stays rooted in optimism and an a love for life more unquenchable than ever.

Revised rating: 4 and half stars (out of 5)

This is a a reflection on Relient K’s career so far. It’s broken down in to eight parts.

Relient K (2000) – 2 stars

The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek (2001) – 3 stars

Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right (2003) – 5 stars

Mmhmm (2004) – 4.5 stars

Five Score and Seven Years Ago (2007) – 4 stars

The Bird and the Bee Sides (2008) – 3.5 stars

Forget and Not Slow Down (2009) – 4 stars

Forget and Not Slow Down, re-interpreted – 4.5 stars

This is part 7 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

A lot happened to Relient K between Five Score and its follow-up LP, Forget and Not Slow Down. Along with some personnel changes, their contract with both Gotee Records and Columbia expired.  But Gotee offered the band creative control of one of its defunct imprints, Mono Vs Stereo. This provided Thiessen and Relient K total freedom in the construction of their next album. The band also signed a deal with Jive to get the record out to a larger public.

So Thiessen went to work, free to explore the depths of his creativity, isolating himself in a cabin  in the woods following a rough breakup to write his next batch of the songs. He later said the experience allowed him to focus on producing thoughtful songs; he’d sometimes spend nine or ten hours following a single train of thought to its conclusion. Accordingly, Forget is a cerebral and ambitious album.

The theme of Forget is moving on — which has caused some critics to oversimplify it as a “break-up album” — and Thiessen’s large emotional vocabulary meshes well with the complicated, mixed-up feelings of saying goodbye. The album strikes a variety of tones — melancholy, desperate, wistful — both musically and lyrically, often at the same time.

The album takes on an unconventional structure, too. The track list shows 15 songs on the album, but it’s really more like nine or ten mini-suites, with a bunch of intros, outros, and thematically paired songs. Most of the band’s albums have had little deliberate flow, but Forget is an example of the whole surpassing the sum of the parts. I hate the term ‘concept album,’ but I think Forget‘s blending tunes and interwoven images earn it.

Thiessen’s words are more imaginative and mature than ever, albeit more obscure. The songs here do a good job transmitting the overpowering difficulty of a split that anyone who has ever parted ways with a serious love will recognize.

The title track is the catchiest and best moment of the album, even if it doesn’t quite fit in with everything else here. The propulsive singalong sounds like it belongs on Mmhmm or Five Score though the lyrics effectively set the tone (of optimism battling emotional adversity) for the rest of the album. It’s one of the band’s best singles ever, only a hair behind “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been.”

Among other distinguished moments on the album are the mini-epic “Savannah” and the gut-wrenching, two-part finale of “This is the End” and “(If You Want It).” None of the songs are bad, however, and it’s more difficult to choose highlights on this album than any previous RK album because of how connected each track is to the one before and after it.

Even more than Five Score before it, Forget lacks the immediacy and pop hooks of Relient K’s early moments. But the brilliant and more subtle songwriting grows on you the more you listen to it. There’s enough happening here, sonically and emotionally, to warrant repeated visits. With each listen, I’m tempted to bump my rating up a half star, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I put this album in rarefied 4.5 or 5 star range at some point down the line.

This is part 6 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 5)

Relient K has consistently released one limited-print EP alongside — usually a few months before or after — each album. But they’ve never done anything quite like The Bird and the Bee Sides, a 26-track double-EP that serves both as a 13-track set of new content and a collection of remastered rarities and B-sides. It’s really one of the great fan services I’ve ever witnessed from a band.

The first thirteen tracks of the disc are all new songs and are subtitled the “The Nashville Tennis EP.”  As the (quite clever) name suggests, it has a little bit of a southern, rootsy undercurrent to it. An acoustic and country instrumentation gets some rotation with the usual guitars, bass, and drums. But aside from this — and the resulting sonic texture that’s very amber and warm — the thirteen songs here have little in common.

It’s clear that most of them are leftovers from the Five Score sessions: Most of the tracks are good ideas that didn’t quite develop or tracks that are novelty or somehow on the fringe. A few of the tracks were written by members of the band other than Thiessen (“No Reaction,” “The Last, The Lost, and the Least,” and “You’ll Always Be My Best Friend,” a cute ballad co-written by Thiessen and bassist Matt Hoopes). A few are underdeveloped (“Beaming”) or ideas that have been tossed around for awhile (“There Was No Thief,” a reinvention of “The Thief” from “The Apathetic EP” that followed Mmhmm). And a few are just not as compelling as the songs on Five Score (“The Lining is Silver”).

My favorite tracks from the “Tennis EP” are “At Least We Made it This Far” a melancholy love song that bemoans the difficulty of long-distance romance, and “Where Do I Go From Here,” which could easily pass as a solid Mmhmm track if not for the banjo intro.

I also want to call out “Bee Your Man,” a novelty/comedy track that rounds out the first half of the disc. I love it not for jokes, but because of how good it actually sounds. It’s a bluegrass/country spoof that, for the twenty or so seconds it’s a straight-face performance, is really good. Relient K could really make a great country-pop album. Some of the best moments of recent albums (“Faking My Own Suicide,” “At Least We Made it This Far”) have been folk and country-tinged.

The second half of the disc is subtitled “The Bird and the Bee Sides” — yep, the same name as the full package — and it’s a bunch of demos, old EP tracks, and acoustic renditions of album songs. Every song, except for a couple of the acoustic cuts and maybe a demo or two, predates Mmhmm, so there’s lots of vintage RK silliness packed into these tracks. Most of them are not worth more than a single listen, but I appreciated having access to them nonetheless. Fans more obsessive or nostalgic than I, particularly those disappointed with the band’s recent releases, might find this set extremely valuable. But little here matches the band’s goodmoments, even if these throwaways are good slices of catchy fun.

The one song here that I unconditionally recommend is the reinvented “Jefferson Aeroplane,” a track that was initially tucked away as the last track on Two Lefts. There, it was a solid but understated way to close a really strong album. Here, it’s fleshed out with acoustic guitar, a more interesting percussion part, a re-write of the meandering ending, and beautiful vocals. This alternate version of “Jefferson Aeroplane” ranks as one of the best tracks ever by the band.

What I really love, though, is that Relient K would put in the effort to not only collect these dusty records — the type that fans unfairly obsess over simply because they’re hard to find — but that they’d put in the effort to get them remastered and sounding just right. Particularly welcome are the four songs on The Vinyl Countdown EP, an older disc (aptly) only available on vinyl. The Bird and the Bee Sides, while not as essential as the band’s real studio albums, is not an empty cash-in.

Some of the remastering adds an excessive layer of texture to the really early, simplistic B-sides (“For the Band,” I’m looking at you). But it’s great to see a band putting forth a fan-first project like this.

This is part 5 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Sorry, Relient K. Five Score and Seven Years Ago is just an awful title for an album — which, aside from the name, is quite good and another creative leap forward for the band.

The most striking element of Five Score is how diverse its sound is. Mmhmm was marked with a very consistent sound except for a few flourishes; banjos and harmonicas occasionally peeked through the glossy coat of guitar and drums. Five Score draws from a wider variety of sounds (*). There’s some synthesized parts, more keyboard than ever, flirtations with folk influences, extensive use of brass, and more. There’s even an a capellasong.

(*) According to the album liner notes, the album features these instruments: guitar, drums, bass, piano, banjo, organ, trumpet, french horn, trombone, baritone horn, bells, toy piano, and penny whistle.

Another distinctive trait of Five Score is how ambitious it is. Dense and disorienting, these fourteen tracks cover a wide variety of themes and structures. From the conspiracy theory about the death of Abraham Lincoln that opens the album (perhaps to justify the bogus album title) to the eleven-minute epic about life and death and Jesus that closes it, there’s a lot happening in Five Score.

One gem is “Forgiven,” which mourns original sin then breaks free from it with a soaring chorus and punchy piano. It’s one of many songs that is challenging both intellectually and spiritually. But the album never eschews accessiblity; lyrical cleverness and sing-a-long choruses keep the music enjoyable. It’s nice to see an album tackle profound themes cogently but not make the mistake of thinking weighty themes require convoluted tunes.

At the same time, the album still has moments of levity. It seems Thiessen listened to a few of the critics and fans who complained that Mmhmm, while a great record, was missing some of the joy of previous albums. Scattered in are a few of the happiest numbers ever recorded by the band. The standout is “Must Have Done Something Right,” the most straightforward boy-girl love song Thiessen has written. It almost sounds like a throwback to Two Lefts.

The album closes with Relient K’s spiritual opus, “Deathbed.” It feels a little bit like a concerto or a rhapsody in that it’s broken down into distinct segments but has a recurring musical theme. It weaves a tale of descent, guilt, suffering, and — ultimately — redemption. For a band whose focus is so pop-oriented with little classical or progressive work, the band skillfully constructs a knotty composition that builds to a moving climax. It also reminds us of Relient K’s undying Christian streak and hopefulness.

But even including “Deathbed” and “Must Have Done Something Right,” the best track on the album is “Faking My Own Suicide.” It’s not only one of the darkest songs Thiessen has ever written, but one of the warmest. The band’s official line on the song is that it’s a re-telling of the old black comedy Harold and Maude, purportedly Thiessen’s favorite film. Keen listeners will notice, though, that the tale parallels the death and resurrection of Jesus. The closing line is a classic: “Our love is so alive.”

Of course, there’s another side to the complexity. The music, while still accessible and pop-like in structure, has lost a bit of its immediacy and urgency. The intricate sound has come at the cost of a bit of Relient K’s usual energy. Simply, with the exception of “Must Have Done Something Right,” the songs here just aren’t as catchy as those on other albums, particularly Mmhmm and Two Lefts.

But Five Score is overall a major success and another key step forward in the Relient K’s development. It features a much wider array of sounds and styles that would expand even further in the band’s next studio album.

This is part 4 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 4 and a half stars (out of 5)

The success and quality of Two Lefts caught the eye of Columbia Records who signed the band to major deal. The ensuing album, Mmhmm, is lean and muscular. Capitol Records effectively focused the band towards heavy-hitting sound and serious lyrics.

Song for song, Mmhmm is Relient K’s strongest album to date. “Be My Escape” is a microcosm of almost everything great about Relient K: an emotional honesty, a prayerful edge, propulsive guitar, and tight melodies. If they ever compile a greatest hits album, “Be My Escape” should be the leadoff.

The close runner-up is “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been,” with some of the band’s best hooks and an opening lyric that deserves to join the pantheon of opening lines: “I watched the proverbial sunrise coming over the Pacific.” Six years and three albums later, “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am” are still the band’s two crowning jewels.

With a big budget studio polishing the band’s performances, the sound is more colorful and evocative than ever before. Even songs that seem designed as throwaways — “My Girl’s Ex-Boyfriend” or the wordy “The Only Thing Worse Than Beating a Dead Horse is Betting on It” — have a sparkle that makes them worth revisiting again and again.

Along with the new sound comes a slightly different attitude: These tracks are darker and sharper than the playful sprawl on previous discs. I wonder how much of this was Thiessen’s vision as opposed to Columbia pushing him to target the “emo” crowd. Regardless, the approach works for the most part. Thiessen is adept enough at writing to convincingly play the love-battered ex-boyfriend. [Edit: I later heard that this album was written in part as a response to his breakup with Katy Perry. Aside from perplex me at that improbable romance, that factoid dispels my concern that Thiessen was writing what he was told, not what he felt.]

The backbone of the album is the two-part suite, “Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet?” and “Let it All Out” which show two different takes on a breakup: angst and ache, respectively. “Hatchet” sears with suffocating drums and pained background wails. “Let it All Out” simmers quietly with piano and wood block. The latter also throws in a brilliant and brief harmonica part that works well enough in the song that I wish there was more of it.

For all the great music and writing — and every track is lyrically astute — there is something detectable missing. A lot of the band’s appeal from their early days was a sense of humor and playful observation. I’m all for deepening and expanding their artistic scope, so I don’t entirely mind the shift, but the reflective tour de forces had to take the place of something. The wit is not entirely gone — probably five or six songs have smile-worthy wordplay — but it’s somewhat absent in the name of improved craft.

Ultimately, Mmhmm is an important step in the band’s development. Thiessen and co. showed hints of becoming more sophisticated musicians with Two Lefts, but they fully embrace their maturity on Mmhmm. The cover of Mmhmm shows a flower in bloom, and it’s around this time that Relient K the musicians began blossoming into Relient K the artists.

This is part 3 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Two years and a forgettable EP later, Relient K released their third and best album to date. Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right… But Three Do — besides making the band 2 for 3 on awful album names — took all of the enjoyable elements of the first two releases, amplified them, weeded out most of the bad, and put it into a fun, messy, exciting product.

The sound, aside from feeling significantly more polished, is not drastically different from Anatomy: it’s still straightforward pop with a “punk” edge to it, along the lines of Blink 182 or Sum 41. But the band’s touch is much more deft this time. The riffs are less repetitive and grating, the performances are stronger, and the band just gels together a little bit better.

What really makes Two Lefts great, though, are the songs. Every song deals with some sort of coming-of-age theme, yet most of the tracks retain their fun. It’s a tough balancing act to pull: The music here is at once accessible, reflective, and substantial. And the writing has aged well; seven years later, Thiessen’s humility seems more relevant than ever.

My favorite trick of Thiessen’s is his knack for hiding some broad observations and repressed emotions behind little images and sly jokes. Take, for instance, “In Love With the ’80s,” the album’s fifth track. On the surface, it’s a bunch of cultural references. But, underneath that surface, the song warns of the danger in fixating on the past (e.g. “Live without a care / what could possibly go wrong?”). It’s a small touch, but a key one, because it gives the song a place in the album’s thematic arc.

The band repeats follows this pattern of adding meaning to the silliness on numerous occasions on Two Lefts; “Mood Rings” is about illogical emotion (courtesy of females), “Gibberish” is an extended “shut up” gag that makes a commentary on the importance of healthy communication, etc.

Among the album’s standout songs are “Chap Stick, Chapped Lips, and Things Like Chemistry,” the opening track, which is three minutes of perfection. Thiessen riffs on theme parks and cell phones and relationships and back again, all with stellar guitars, drums, and “na na na” harmonies.

“Forward Motion,” which slows down after a passable intro guitar solo, also excels. Aside from the clever lyrics (“Experience the bittersweet / to taste defeat then brush my teeth / ’cause I struggle with forward motion”), the song rocks harder than anything on the band’s first two albums, yet ends on a gentle piano riff.

Those two, “In Love With the ’80s,” and ballad “Getting Into You” — which is just as good as Anatomy’s “For the Moments I Feel Faint” without going straight for the Jesus jugular — are among the strongest tracks here. But there’s hardly a weak track in these 14. The whole album coheres into a lament of the pitfalls of suburbia — or, more generally, complacency and shallowness. Even the joke track at the end of the album is strong, the funniest the band’s ever done.

What’s most refreshing about Two Lefts is that we get our first peek at Thiessen being a true sage, a bona fide lyrical maestro. His lyrics are incredibly shrewd in spite of the silliness. Humility and spirituality, which come from Thiessen’s roots as a Christian worship leader, give the album a warm, contemplative center that lends his music  poignancy ¹. Three albums in, his writing was pretty strong, and it would only grow better with time.

The band would soon grow more sophisticated and polished, but Two Lefts remains Relient K’s masterpiece. It retains their early exuberance but packs an emotional punch as strong as their more recent work. The transition between quirky, small-time band to major-label artist is captured here, and it has the best of both worlds.

This is part 2 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Taking the strengths of the debut — some catchy hooks and a cleverness in blending outright Christianity with secular themes – The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek is a big step forward for Relient K in every department. It’s not quite a good album, but it certainly set a trajectory for Relient K to reach that plane.

First, the performances by the band are leaps ahead of the debut. From the rhythm to the guitar to the vocal harmonies, Anatomy sounds like the work of professionals as opposed instead of four kids in a basement. The band sounds like it really cares about the music: subtleties (particularly in the drumwork) absent from the debut give these songs momentum and shape.

The songwriting is also considerably more intelligent. “Sadie Hawkins Dance” manages to be cheeky and nerdy while still endearing, at least if you can excuse the few dud rhymes (“She said ‘you’re cool and smooth with talking / Will you go with me to the Sadie Hawkins?’” — ouch). The best track of the album is “For the Moments I Feel Faint,” an impassioned ballad in defense of Jesus. Complete with strings and a falsetto coda, it could easily pass for something you’d hear on the radio if it wasn’t for the J-bomb in the chorus.

The band also experiment with a few themes and ideas here that are interesting if not entirely successful. “Failure to Excommunicate” proclaims a love for “the outcast,” which, if the opening verse is to be trusted, means illegal immigrants. “What Have You Been Doing Lately?” reveals that condescension is not a pretty color for Relient K.

For all the improvement, there’s lots of filler mixed in. “May the Horse Be With You” is one weak pun after another without much music tying together. “Lion-O” is an empty cultural reference that’s at least remedied with some interesting hooks. With eighteen tracks, there’s enough material to find spots where the band almost gets it right — the syncopated bridge in “Breakdown,” for example — then bloats it or mixes it in with mediocrity.

Thiessen whips out the piano and even the horns in “Less is More,” to very good effect. It’s one of the few tracks — along with “Sadie Hawkins,” “For the Moments,” the peppy “Pressing On,” and a couple others — that’s worth repeated listening on their sophomore album.

This is part 1 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

One of the best arguments in favor of nurture over nature, Relient K transformed themselves from completely insignificant to one of pop’s most underrated bands not through luck or by accident, but hard work and steady improvement. Each album’s craft is better than the last, and the sophistication of the songwriting has been on a steady incline.

The band’s consistent effort has paid great dividends, but has not been without sacrifice. The slapdash silliness that defined the band’s early work almost completely disappeared by their fourth album, for better and worse. As they tread further down the road of experimentation, Relient K’s pop hooks have lost a bit of their immediacy.

Hailing from Canton, Ohio, the band formed in 1998 when Matt Thiessen and two of his buddies began writing simple pop songs. The three decided to put off starting a worship band, their initial goal. After a demo album and an EP, Relient K’s self-titled debut was released in 2000.

Generic and simplistic, Relient K is undoubtedly the weakest studio album the band has released. From the excessive use of cultural references — as if merely mentioning Marilyn Manson or Back to the Future is itself funny — to the bland instrumental performances and vocal harmonies, their debut had little to indicate the band could some day develop into something special.

Only a few tracks are noteworthy. “Softer to Me,” though its lyrics are a rather toothless lament of the challenge of just being alive, is more ambitious musically than anything else on the album, with a pleasant little guitar groove and some tempo changes. “K Car” attempts to give reasoning for naming the band (*) after a shoddy compact Plymouth (the explanation, a very Christian one and foreshadowing the band’s tendency for self-deprecation, is that “we’ve got a K-car on the road of life,” but “we’re gonna get far if the driver’s Christ”).

(*) Though the song gives justifies the name, it doesn’t address the misspelling. The car is spelled “Reliant K.”  Whether the band has confirmed this or not, I’m not sure, but I’ve read on multiple websites that Thiessen and co. were concerned about copyright, which I don’t think would have been an issue even if they’d used Chrysler’s spelling. Oh well; it’s not like the band’s key demographic is likely to know what a Reliant car is anyways.

Overall, though, the fluff far outweighs the substance. Listeners are suggested to avoid this disc unless they want looking for insight into the band’s development.

There’s no post here that could be good enough to justify a co-founder’s several-month absence from this site, so instead of making my first post a mammoth mega-concept-post (I have an idea for one of those, though), I’ll start with a scattershot of scraps: seven mostly unrelated thoughts on music from this past decade.

1. Kanye is underrated

It’s way too easy to hate on Kanye, with his ALL CAPS BLOG POSTS and “imma let you finish” and his awards show tantrums. The reason I don’t really judge him that much about it is because a) I’m convinced that the majority of Americans underrate the pressures of being a 24/7 celebrity, that they’d have their share of meltdowns if given virtually infinite money and respect only to have it periodically taken away, and b) each one of his errors is caring too much about something instead of caring too little. He doesn’t get caught with a prostitute. He inarticulately addresses race issues.

The difference between Kanye and other mildly-respected-but-still-love-to-bash-em musician shipwrecks (e.g. Britney, Amy Winehouse, Chris Brown) is that Kanye has visionary talent, an enormous work ethic (four meticulous albums in seven years), and a generational-potentially-historic career that could very well be in its infancy or, at worst, its adolescence.

Maybe “underrated” isn’t the right word, as he’s getting a lot of end-of-year and end-of-decade love on countdowns and recaps. Maybe “overhated” and “underappreciated artistically.” Kanye is very much an auteur – someone who has a clear voice, someone who represents yet transcends his influences, someone who has impeccable intuition even if quirks and miscalculations speckle his oeuvre. Honestly, I don’t care if he carries himself like a love-hungry baby as long as his music continues to bristle with passion unmatched in hip-hop.

There are a few pieces of evidence I could use in my Kanye-as-genre-defining-auteur case, but I’ll just bring up this one. Ask me if you want more. I have them ready.

808s and Heartbreaks. Most critics gave it love, and a few of its singles had Top 40 traction. (I like it a lot but don’t adore it. It’s maybe an 8.08 out of 10.) Still, a lot of people turned their nose up at it as lazy, uninteresting, trendy. How completely far from the truth.

It came from Kanye’s desire to prove that he wasn’t just a competent beatmaker, that he’s something special and timeless and has actual inspiration. (Of course, anyone who had listened closely to his albums and observed his skill at combining unlikely sounds into something that sounds natural and soulful would already have known this.)

To do this, he ironically chose the most trendy and bashable of instruments: auto-tune. Far from following the flock, as it might appear, he reminded us that auto-tune just an instrument/tool and not a movement, that it can sound good or bad depending on how skillful and artful its user is. Listen to the album: it’s careful and nuanced and deep in a way that T-Pain and Chris Brown aren’t and can never be.

This album epitomizes Kanye’s essence: paradoxical, unexpected, and slightly ironic. He makes a claim for respectability using auto-tune. He redefines gangsta rap while wearing a polo shirt. He moves the tough, beat-driven hip-hop industry forward by sampling old-school, vocal-based music. He’s rap’s biggest baby and its hardest worker. The mere fact that any of this actually works seems at once counterintuitive and expected. Everything about Kanye is a self-contradiction

(Semi-tangent: His debut album is the one getting all the love, which is a bit of a shame considering it’s probably his weakest. It’s about 40% skits and novelties. I’ll admit that it was an influential prototype and that it set a new formula. But I’d also point out that he did similar stuff producing Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, an adored album whose success is deeply indebted to Kanye, which people often forget. However, Late Registration is Kanye’s best album to date, not College Dropout.)

2. Here’s to the Night might be the least romantic romance song ever

Do you care about the band Eve 6? You should. They’re better than you think they are. Just because they have a little bit of a Gimmick (talking really fast) doesn’t mean they made bad music. Their best stuff is so far past gimmick status, I’m offended if you call them a gimmick band. They don’t even talk that fast on most of the songs on their third and final and best album (see point 3 for more info).

Anyways, Here’s to the Night off of their sophomore Horrorscope became one of their biggest hits as a tearjerking graduation hug-your-acquaintances-and-tell-them-you-love-them ballad. It has the sound of a great, timeless love song. It’s got some real whoppers of lines in there: “Don’t let me let you go” – “Here’s to the tears you knew you’d cry” – “Tomorrow’s gonna come too soon.” It has violins. We’re talking heavy duty emotional waterworks and sap here.

…But take a careful look at the complete lyrics. Read them all the way through, and think about what he’s saying. He’s talking about a drunk hook-up! What!? “Put your name on the line, along with place and time.” “Are you willing to be had? Are you cool with just tonight?”

This had to be intentional. Somebody dared them to make the most romantic-sounding song about a one night stand they could. It’s like Every Breath You Take – a beautiful ballad that’s actually about stalking someone. The Police later admitted that, yeah, they wanted to see how many people would make a stalker song their first married dance. Eve 6 was just carrying the torch.

3. Speaking of Eve 6, It’s All In Your Head is phenomenal

One of my picks for album of the decade is It’s All In Your Head, Eve 6′s third and final album. I’ve already written a rambly, subpar post on Earn This about how much I love this album and why, track for track, it’s one of the best of the aughts. So I won’t elaborate too much here.

There’s a chance that it’s over-calculated as an edgy, Kid A, In Utero attempt at darkness and low accessibility. But I’ve listened to it enough to know that, even if it is calculated, it isn’t noticeable to any extent that it might bother me.

If I had to take a guess, it’s that Collins wrote a few songs, realized, wow, this is pretty heavy compared to our usual, and then just ran with it. He convinced the band and the producers to make it sound slightly experimental and uneven. Whaddya know, it worked.

The tension that led up to Eve 6′s break-up after their third album probably helped make It’s All In Your Head great, but I can’t help but wonder how high the band might’ve soared if they had a chance to stick together. They could have, slowly and surely, gained traction as a great band.

What a great transition opportunity!

4. Relient K reminds me of The Beatles

I’ve thought and thought and thought, and the band whose trajectory Relient K most matches (on a creative, not commercial, level) is The Beatles.

Relient K – absolutely one of my favorite bands ever already, and they still have plenty of recording life left – started the aughts making puddle-shallow Christian pop. Their 2000 self-titled debut shows a knack for a decent melody, but that’s about it. The lyrics have little wit, the harmonies are lacking, and the songs are pretty derivative. Softer to Me is the album’s faint glimmer of ambition, but that’s all. Compare this album to the Beatles’ early shows on the Liverpool bar scene where they build their chops.

Their follow-up The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek (2001) is an enormous step up in every way. The songs are better, the sound is better, the lyrics are smarter, the tones are more textured and diverse. It’s still relatively generic, but at least it’s decent filler. There are a few gag-inducing puns, but a classic song or two nonetheless. This album is like Please Please Me or With the Beatles: inconsistent but promising, even if it doesn’t signal at all where the band is headed; fun at the time, but ultimately insignificant besides a few songs once the “real” albums start coming

Their third album, Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right… But Three Do (2003), is like a cross between Rubber Soul and A Hard Day’s Night. It’s secretly Relient K’s most enjoyable work, rooted in their early sound and technique with a few flourishes and flirtations of a more complex, ambitious, serious craft. But most people look a few albums ahead in “best of” discussions, even if this earlier stuff will probably age just as well. Rubber Soul and Hard Day’s Night are the same way.

Two Lefts is one of my few favorite albums ever. I won’t elaborate too much since I’m working on a review, but it’s the perfect balance of spirituality and fun. It doesn’t go for the jugular, but uses a few playful little images as a lens for some pretty serious themes. It’s a great transition album: forward-thinking and backwards-reflecting, feet effectively in both camps.

On Mmhmm (2005), their fourth album, the band got a major contract and released a loaded, serious work that is my runner-up favorite by the band. It features their two best songs to date — possibly top three or four.  The album is like Revolver in that it’s a bold statement and the big, fearless leap into something bigger than the band was before. (The album is not like Revolver in that it’s not particularly kaleidoscopic or diverse.)

The next album and leap forward was Five Score and Seven Years Ago (2007). It’s bizarrely parallel to Sgt. Pepper’s: the songs aren’t quite as consistently good as the previous album’s, but the album’s sound is more diverse and striking. The highs are mighty high, the lows are still pretty good, and the album ends in a dramatic, existence-contemplating epic (A Day In the Life for Sgt. Pepper’s and Deathbed for Five Score).

The Beatles-Relient K analogy keeps on working: Relient K/The Beatles’ next project is a slightly indulgent if entertaining side effort, Magical Mystery Tour/The Bird and the Bee Sides. It’s only debatably a “real” album, but it helps the band further develop its voice. It’s good, but slightly secondary. The next album is probably better as a result of the band getting more practice here.

The Bird and the Bee Sides also has shades of The White Album, in that the voices of each one of the band members’ voices is heard and the album is overstuffed and really broad.

Finally, we get to Relient K’s 2009 release, Forget and Not Slow Down, and the analogy breaks down. There’s no good Beatles comparison here. It’s far too meticulous and conceptual to be RK’s White Album, and it’s not a polished semi-throwback (Abbey Road) or an underwhelming collapse album (Let It Be).

Instead, it shows the band at an impeccable craft and new experimental high. I love that they’re making music like they really want to make the best album possible. It sounds like they really believe that their fans deserve a full-hearted, open-minded effort. They trust us to judge on quality, not familiarity. It’s a contemplative album that effortlessly swerves between dark and feather-light. There’s a hint of Dark Side of the Moon here in the way the album reprises itself and freely flows from beginning to end as if one track.

What I miss from this album is that sound from Two Lefts like they were just hanging out and having fun. The hunger for the band to be great has grown and grown and swallowed the band’s original playfulness. But I’ll take hungry and brilliant over playful and predictable any day.

I worry that the band has hit their ceiling, but then again, I’ve had that concern since Mmhmm, and the band hasn’t stepped down from any challenge yet. A bigger concern for me is that some money-hungry executive will shoot down the band’s next big leap because it’s “uncommercial” or some nonsense like that. Keep on keepin’ on Relient K.

(I’ve talked enough about Relient K for one post, but I just want to add that I’m really looking forward to their probably-inevitable throwback phase when they sound like they did around Two Lefts or Anatomy, and make their best album ever. I’m predicting a top five hit on the rock charts and overdue renewed public interest in their career by 2016.)

5. I wish Taylor Swift was my older sister

I’m guessing you look down upon pop/country album Fearless, Taylor’s second LP. It’s teeny-bopper radio music that’s surprisingly good. Her voice is greatly enhanced by digital wizardry so that she sounds like a young Shania Twain.

…Except, Shania Twain is a cowgirl and a tease in a leather skirt. She sounds better with a lite dance beat behind her or syrupy mega-ballad production in front of her.

Taylor is a genuinely good-hearted young lady. She sounds best pouring her heart out with a few understated fiddles and guitars as accompaniment. She writes or co-writes every one of her songs. This is in contrast to the Jo Bros and Miley, who will record whatever boardroom-designed garbage is necessary for them to sell millions.

Taylor Swift is more patient and has more of a vision. She’s slowly reclaiming a rap generation for country music. Most impressive of all, she’s doing this while preaching sound character, chastity, and genuine concern for mankind.

She’s clearly nice and hard-working. I’ll overlook her People Magazine romances – one of the Jonases and a Twilight guy – and presume her real personality is like the one she sings. If not, she puts on a good show, because her interviews make her seem simply delightful.

She’d be the ideal older sister: A good role model with a congenial personality and a great intuition for living life with character. She knows hard work and a savvy approach gets results. I would do well to have an influence like that in my life. (Don’t betray me, Taylor. I don’t want to have to eat these words when your cell phone nude pics leak or you get sent to the hospital for binge drinking.)

6. My favorite Green Day album isn’t by Green Day

Foxboro Hot Tubs: What a gaudy band name, as wonderfully bad as any hair metal song. That’s what the Green Day guys named their side project in 2007 when they released the album Stop Drop and Roll!!! to a “meh” from most critics.

I’m with Stephen Thomas Erlewine, though. It provides a compelling alternate history where they pursue their Kinks fetish from Warning to garage rock levels, falling head over heels for a half dozen other British hallmark bands along the way. This is what Green Day could’ve become if they didn’t want to be, you know, serious and all. The craft and polish from 21st Century Breakdown and American Idiot are there, but the arena ambition isn’t.

Okay, it might not be quite as good as American Idiot, I’ll begrudgingly admit, but it provides an answer for a tantalizing “what if” — as in, “What if Green Day never grew weary of being an underrated punching bag for critics?”

My biggest complaint about the album is that they didn’t blow it up to Definitely Maybe level of making every song catchy enough for the album to pass as a greatest hits package.

7. Ska’s afterlife rules

For better and worse, the third-wave ska movement died with Bradley Nowell. There was a hit here or there for the next couple years, but by the turn of the century, it was no longer cool to sing about romancing and drugging and farting to a sped-up reggae beat, like Reel Big Fish and Sublime and No Doubt and The Bosstones and Less Than Jake so valiantly had.

But as soon as the genre that made critics gag found its resting place, something great happened. People making ska either quit if they were lousy/in it for a buck, or they stopped trying to make songs they thought would sell and started making songs they thought were good.

The rise of what I will call ska’s fourth wave, even though it’s more the drag-back from the third wave, includes Rx Bandits, Streetlight Manifesto, The Slackers, and Big D and the Kids Table. Now the music has found ways to be forward-thinking while still remaining loyal to the traits that define their genre. It’s a bit underground and doesn’t sell many records, but darn if it isn’t some good music.

I would expand on why it’s so good, but I have the sudden urge to go turn on Streetlight Manifesto’s Everything Goes Numb. You should go do that too.

If you like music featuring impressive craft, substance, and some brains, and you have a soft spot for the ska backbeat like I do, then you would do well to investigate ska’s fourth wave.