My first introduction to Relient K came in January 2001 at a concert at Second Baptist Church in Richmond, VA. Being a sixth grade youth group kid in 2001, I was there to see the headliner, Christian ska legends, The O.C. Supertones (who’s guitarist that night – Ethan Luck – would ironically go on to play drums for Relient K). Opening for them were two underground bands that I had never heard of: one, a group of SoCal surfers who opened their set with a silly cover of “Footloose” and who sang “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight” to each other mid-set, maybe you’ve heard of them – Switchfoot – and the other, a group of teenagers who played us a song called “Marilyn Manson Ate My Girlfriend” – Relient K.

It sounds silly, but this was truly my first punk rock show. The O.C. Supertones, Switchfoot and Relient K in a church may not exactly be Strike Anywhere and Ignite, but Relient K’s set was my first exposure to mosh pits and crowd surfing. That’s right: in a church sanctuary, kids were moshing in front of the altar and crowd surfing off of pews to songs like “Hello McFly,” “Staples” and “Softer To Me.” Someone even had to stop the band’s set to tell kids to stop. I was entranced. Not so much by the band, per se, but by the embodiment of punk rock that was before me at that moment. I have Relient K to thank for that. Now, at the time, frankly, I assumed I would never see or hear from them again. They had silly songs – like one that hadn’t come out yet that they played that night and sadly followed them the rest of their career, “Sadie Hawkins Dance” – their bass player looked like he was having a seizure while they played, and, at that time, they seemed like awkward blink-182 wannabes.

Nevertheless, we bought their self-titled debut CD directly from them at their merch table – I distinctly remember guitarist Matt Hoopes’ signature being “M@“ – but as the weeks went on after the show, much to my surprise, I couldn’t get the songs out of my head. The songs were definitely cheesy, but those cheeseballs wormed their way into my skull and never left. Their next two albums, The Anatomy Of The Tongue In Cheek and Two Lefts Don’t Make A Right…But Three Do certainly held on to the cheese, but each still saw the band push their music forward, bit by bit. However, it was 2004’s Mmhmm that changed everything.

It all began one night on PureVolume when I heard a new song called “The One I’m Waiting For.” In its first few seconds, the first thing I noticed was the significantly higher production value in the drums and the shuffling, almost Edge-like guitar riff, but then the whole band kicked in and its breakneck tempo knocked me on my ass. As the song continued, going from double time to half time to drum-less breakdown and back, startled, I pondered, “this is Relient K?” Then they released their now-signature song, the perfect, “Be My Escape,” and I found myself asking that same question for a different reason. The sheer songwriting power of that song and its lyrics had me dumbfounded: “Just two years prior, hadn’t this band released a song entirely in gibberish?” Mmhmm’s song-craft was a massive quantum leap from the band’s previous albums, and it displayed that frontman Matt Theissen was far from some cheeky Ohio youth group goofball. This guy was deep. Yes, “My Girl’s Ex-Boyfriend” holds Mmhmm back from being a complete departure, but Mmhmm was different, and it connected. It catapulted those silly guys I saw in Second Baptist Church to TRL! For me personally, I knew Relient K were an important band, but after Mmhmm, I knew I was a lifer.

But sadly, as it happens for so many, just as soon as they came, many of the casual fans that jumped on the Relient K bandwagon after seeing “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” on MTV or hearing it on the radio, were quick to jump right off and tune out. Matt Theissen expressed some reflective self-awareness on this issue in a 2013 interview, stating, “when Mmhmm came out…pop-punk was a genre that had a time limit on it, and that was…right about when it was going to get really old for a lot of people, so we kind of caught the tail of that.” But casual listeners tuning out after Mmhmm was a grave mistake because this is where Relient K’s discography gets interesting. Let’s break it down:



– Five Score And Seven Years Ago (2007) – Mmhmm on steroids. Helmed by super-producer Howard Benson (My Chemical Romance, Daughtry, All American Rejects), Five Score is a document of a band actively “trying to make a big record,” as Matt Hoopes discussed on The Local Wave podcast. The songs indeed got bigger – “I Need You” – but also, more “radio” – “Give Until There’s Nothing Left To Give” – more ambitious – the 11-minute epic “Deathbed” – yet still maintained the sensibilities of classic Relient K – “Come Right Out and Say It.” And it should have worked. But sadly, without a single as strong as “Be My Escape,” the album failed to connect with the public in the same ways as its predecessor. Hoopes offered a possibility, pointing out that in trying to “be a big rock band,” they were also “trying to be more vanilla, more watered down…trying to toe the line between pop punk but not too much,” and that perhaps the record suffered from that noncommittal musicality. Though, to note, Howard Benson was certain that first single, “Must Have Done Something Right,” would not only be the biggest song of Relient K’s career, but the biggest of his career, saying it would be even bigger than Hoobastank’s “The Reason” (even though Hoopes himself downplayed the track, saying it “never really translated…[and] sounded like a weird Jimmy Buffet song”).



– The Bird And The Bee Sides (2008) – Easily the most interesting “b-sides” record I have ever heard, this 26 song collection features a 13-song new album on one side, and a traditional b-sides album on the other. Some tracks are prototypical Relient K – “The Scene and Herd,” “The Last, The Lost, The Least,” but most of this collection is totally madcap. “Where Do I Go From Here,” possibly the band’s fastest, most recklessly tempo’d song, has got to be the only punk song that opens with banjos, “At Least We Made It This Far” and “You’ll Always Be My Best Friend” are pure campfire folk, “There Was No Thief” is the band’s best attempt at being Death Cab For Cutie, “No Reaction,” jumps from headlong SoCal punk verses to island-soaked reggae choruses to evoke Goldfinger and Social Distortion, “Beaming” is Beach Boys with pedal steels and “Bee Your Man” is as if the Jerky Boys made a honky tonk country/western album. It’s out there. But if you’re a fan of the band and enjoy when they go completely bonkers, don’t sleep on this one.



– Forget And Not Slow Down (2009) – As Hoopes will tell you, this is the record where Relient K threw “everything out the window” and just fought for what they wanted to carve their own path. Admittedly, I did not fully appreciate Forget And Not Slow Down until many years after its release, and I was definitely not alone, as it is the most “adult” record in this inherently youthful band’s catalog, both musically and lyrically. However, as I have gotten older and gone through more life experience, the earnestness of Forget has come around, something Hoopes pointed out on The Local Wave podcast as well. As such, Forget And Not Slow Down is somewhat of a tough record to get through. So raw, real and honest, it begs for a full-album listen, as opposed to scattered single tracks. Written by Matt Theissen alone in a cabin in the woods of Tennessee after a brutal breakup, diving into this album is an emotional ask. Everyone has been through heartache, and Forget And Not Slow Down is a classic, front-to-back breakup record. The title track and “Sahara” remain two of my all time favorite Relient K songs.



– Is For Karaoke (2011) – Not your average covers collection. At one end of the spectrum, songs like “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” Justin Bieber’s “Baby” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” and at the other end, “One Headlight,” “Interstate Love Song,” Cake’s “The Distance,” and, the crown jewel of this collection, the band’s arguably-better-than-the-original take on Third Eye Blind’s “Motorcycle Drive By.” Among many others. These guys know how to do covers.



– Collapsible Lung (2013) – Far and away the most polarizing Relient K album, Collapsible Lung is…frustrating as a lifelong fan. As an outsider, it seemed as if Matt Theissen had watered himself down, bringing in an assemblage of co-writers trying to create trite Top 40 music, with examples like “PTL,” and “That’s My Jam” emerging. Relient K were always cheesy, but on Collapsible Lung it just sounds…coerced. Like what outside writers determined was their vision of Relient K. “Lost Boy” sounds like a logical next step from “Must Have Done Something Right,” though while the latter is indeed Bubblicious Relient K, the former comes across as an attempt to underscore a T-Mobile commercial. In an interview at the time, Theissen admitted that following his success with Owl City (he co-wrote the smash “Fireflies”), a lot of his life living in Nashville revolved around “trying to write for Top 40, like, ‘Let’s try and write a song for Britney Spears today.’ [So] I thought, ‘Why not do the same thing for Relient K?’” The most frustrating aspect of this album is that it is bookended by two songs that show what it could have been. Opener “Don’t Blink” is quintessential Relient K: mammoth guitars, 90’s pop/rock influences, soaring chorus with gang vocals. The band still play the song at just about every show and they should. Had this been the lead single on Five Score, this article may have been quite different. Moreover, album closer, “Collapsible Lung,” a song in the vein of “Deathbed” or “(If You Want It),” is as if the raw, earnest, emotional Matt Theissen exposed on Forget And Not Slow Down peaked his head out for a glorious three-and-a-half minutes. However, off of those two, I have always shared an affinity for “Boomerang,” as well as “If I Could Take You Home,” with its fluttering, airy lead guitars, and “Disaster” definitely hints at where the band would go musically on Air For Free.



– Air For Free (2016) – While Collapsible Lung may have at one time been considered Relient K’s oddball, Air For Free is their true oddball for being completely anomalous from anything they have ever done. To give a quick reductive assessment of the overall feel of the album, I would say it reminds me of a children’s musical, though that is in no way belittling its content, as the biggest asset Air For Free has going for it is that on musicality alone, it is far-and-away the most ambitious collection Theissen and Hoopes have ever made. Songs like “Heartache” go through multiple tempo changes, the instrumentation and arrangements of the songs go all over the place, and you have to love the heavenly, Beach Boys-style backing vocals on the gorgeous “Flower,” harkening back to Five Score‘s “Plead The Fifth.” This is artistic evolution done right. I will fully admit that I don’t necessarily “get” all of it – with songs like, “Mrs. Hippopotamuses’,” “Cat,” and “Elephant Parade,” it can get…odd – but its adventurousness is impossible to ignore and that feeling of wonder that runs throughout is infectious. “Marigold,” “Bummin’,” “Local Construction,” and the sparse beauty of the piano-and-vocodor-vocals-only “Empty House” are all sublime pieces of Ben Folds-inspired pop, all perfectly underscoring the singularity of Air For Free. It is the Relient K album that most has a vibe all its own. The songs are completely unique, both as Relient K songs and just as songs in general and that is something to be admired 10 albums into your career. And dammit, Matt Theissen should write a musical!

I have seen Relient K 15 times. There are only two album touring cycles – Two Lefts and Air For Free – that I have missed. They are a band that never puts on the same show twice; having seen them cover everything from The Office theme song to “Good Life” by Kanye West to “Surf Wax America” by Weezer around an inflatable campfire. I have seen them play trumpets, harps, banjos and glockenspiels. I have seen them accompanied onstage by a giant buffalo named “Dermike,” whom they claimed was “stolen from a Six Flags.” In late 2016 and early 2017 they released two holiday EP’s – The Creepier EP…er for Halloween – very much still in that “children’s musical” vibe – and Truly Madly Deeply for Valentine’s Day – which features the fantastic, self-described “what guys in their thirties playing pop punk sounds like” track, “Candy Hearts.” As a songwriter, so much of their music creeps its way into mine. Their music has been there for me and so many others when we needed it and it is forever a part of my DNA.

As for now, though, Matt Theissen is preparing to release his first solo album, Wind Up Bird – recorded with Darren King, formerly of MuteMath – under the moniker Matt Theissen & The Earthquakes, which served as the impetus for this article. Last night, I had the privilege of being at The Basement here in Nashville to witness their third show ever. Songs like “Dude,” “Climb” and “Daydream” reminded me of Alexi Murdoch, “Mother’s Triumph” has an acoustic Death Cab For Cutie vibe, but I think the swing of first single “Man Of Stone” has to be my favorite, as it had me bobbing my head instantly. But for those thinking that a solo album could mean a total reinvention, I can confirm that the Matt Theissen we all know and love is alive and well: they closed the set with a song about Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and the song “Oedipus” is, in Theissen’s words, about “wanting a race-car bed but being too old.” Be that as it may, he is definitely taking a few exciting left turns with this project. But hey, didn’t a wise man once say that three lefts make a right?

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