Review Summary: Bless their candy hearts < 3
Relient K are so adorable. Everything they do lets you know that they buy their girlfriends flowers every month, are always the first to say “I love you”, and that they never miss a bedtime prayer. They’re the poster boys of virtue, and their music is just as sugary sweet as they are. They’re Owl City with actual talent. They may be far removed from their heyday, when they produced pop-punk staples like
Mmhmm and
Forget and Not Slow Down, but that hasn’t stopped them from chugging on and remaining somewhat popular. In fact, just last year they put out one of their better overall releases in
Air For Free which, while sappy and gleeful to nearly
Five Score and Seven Years Ago proportions, was jam packed with sunny, catchy melodies. What flew under the radar was
The Creepier EP…er, a collection of three Halloween-themed tunes. In keeping with the spirit of scoring semi-holidays, they’re now celebrating the schmaltziest one of all: Valentine’s Day.
Truly Madly Deeply. That’s kind of the opposite of what this EP actually offers. Nothing here is all that heartfelt or moving; they are just three songs released for the sole purpose of providing fans with a few cute, fun little ditties that they can have the novelty of playing on Valentines Day before they inevitably get dumped for someone who possesses testosterone. Still, it can be a nice way to kill seven minutes if you are feeling particularly upbeat. ‘Candy Hearts’ is actually alive with pop-punk undertones, more so than the majority of
Air For Free, which is both encouraging and frustrating because it’s been almost a decade since they’ve applied those kinds of dynamics to a real album. If there’s one song on this EP that you have the patience to check out, make it ‘Candy Hearts.’
The other two tracks are basically theme goers, ensuring that
Truly Madly Deeply continues to make wholly unsubtle references to love and all that shit. ‘Happy Valentimes’ (ugh – fuck how cute these guys try to be!) is a groovy little tune built on a continual three chord strum and lots of
ba da ba’s. ‘BMI Valentine’ is an acoustic ballad that actually shows off Matthew Thiessen’s vocals quite nicely with some inflection changes that make the chorus pretty catchy. And that’s just about the whole of this EP, it’s kind of catchy if you’re already into Relient K but there is obviously nothing on a Valentine’s-themed EP that is going to need unraveling or further analysis. It’s the equivalent of a candy heart – sweet, kind of pointless because there’s tons of better candy out there, and ultimately a novelty that you’ll forget about as soon as February 14th passes. The holiday is upon us though, so you might as well indulge. Happy Valentimes Day Sputnik, you earned this.
