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Relient K
Forget and Not Slow Down
Mono vs Stereo
15 tracks / 42:36
www.relientk.com

From the first time I heard Relient K’s “Marilyn Manson Ate My Girlfriend,” I knew I’d found a band I’d hate forever. While I softened over the years and put the band in a ‘fun novelty’ corner, I didn’t hear anything to convince me they were more than a ‘youth group’ band, content to write goofy little pop-punk songs for a teenage audience. Turns out that as Relient K grew up as people, they also grew up as artists. You’d expect that to happen, but a lot of artists simply… don’t. Forget and Not Slow Down is the best album of Relient K’s career, and may be the best album this year.

At first blush, it doesn’t seem like the anything is amiss. The title track is clearly a Relient K tune, an upbeat rocker to lead the disc off. Sure, it has surprising bittersweet, reflective quality, but otherwise is an anthemic pop-rocker. “I Don’t Need a Soul” follows with what seems to be more of the same, perhaps laden with more piano and rhodes than is typical… but beneath the surface is an emotional rollercoaster waiting to squeeze and release your heart to gasping relief. “I Don’t Need a Soul” is shockingly heartbreaking, like a polar bear swim; and then from that point on all bets are off. Relient K is still a rock band, Forget is full of power chord guitar riffs; but there is a wealth of instrumentation and unexpected surprises. Outros, intros, interludes and clever sequencing create an actual album that must be experienced end-to-end. Guest vocalists including Aaron Gillespie (Underoath) drop in to dramatic effect, particular on the shockingly heavy track “Sahara,” itself the first of a three-part ‘desert’ song cycle; “Oasis” in the middle, until you come to the “Savannah”, a cello heavy song that swells the heart with memories both joyful and difficult.

I don’t want to suggest that Relient K’s latest is ‘better’ simply because Thiessen is no longer force-feeding pop culture references and is writing ‘sad’ songs. That’s not it. The songwriting, arrangement, lyrics, every aspect about Forget and Not Slow Down is so far beyond even the band’s well-regarded Five Score & Seven Years Ago as to be the difference between Please Please Me and Revolver. The Beatles comparison is not made lightly; it’s almost unbelievable the musician Matt Thiessen has matured into. He has found the ability to write, creatively but honestly, about relationships, loss, memories, regret after having moved on from the naivety of the early-twenties idealism and crossing the threshold into adulthood. It’s a step some people never take.

There are two things that can happen here: I can gush, effusively, about every song on the record in exacting detail, or I can end the review right here with a glowing finale and let you discover it for yourself. I’ll opt for the latter. Do not do yourself the disservice of experiencing only pieces of Forget and Not Slow Down. Buy the full album, listen to it alone, with headphones on, in the car loud, peel back the layers of a complex yet accessible record, in all its bittersweet brilliance. It is a perfect record, with only notable flaw:

How on earth are Relient K going to follow it up?

Tags: 2009 Releases, Matt Thiessen, Mono vs Stereo, Relient K

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 4:04 PM and is filed under REVIEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.