Review Summary: "You and life remain beautiful, you and life remain beautiful"
Ahh Relient K. It’s not an exaggeration to say that many seemingly unlikely people have heard them. In fact, they are a pretty frequent place to start listening to music these days. Their lyrics are safe. They often times write fun songs about high school with clever twists and catchy tunes. Your parents will love them. And really, they’re pretty good at their trade. Their second and third albums (few really care about their debut) showed a simple fun formula that, while thoroughly enjoyable, had minimal significant artistic accomplishments. Mmhmm was a giant step for the band, as if they were actually TRYING to be more than what they had already been. And success came. “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” brought the band much success, but the album as whole was less consistent than their previous work. And then there was Five Score. For those that don’t know, they let their success get to them. But following it up with the more indie Birds and the Bee Sides and a solid Christmas album showed that the band might have something up their sleeve. Cue Forget and Not Slow Down.
“We should get jerseys cause we make a good team / but yours would look better than mine, cause you're outta my league / and I know that it's so cliché to tell you that everyday / I spend with you is the new best day of my life”
Those were the words sung by Relient K on Five Score Seven Years ago. Fans vented their frustration as this song played in their ears. Really though, this wasn’t totally out of character for Relient K, just more extreme than anything else they had done in the past. It was pretty clear that everything was going just peachy for the band. So there might be some shock value to this fact about Forget and Not Slow Down: it’s a
break-up album. So this is a test for the guys; will they break and finally give way to an angsty fury built up over all these years, or will they push through it and continue their trend of optimism? The emphatic answer is the latter. Forget and Not Slow Down is a signature Relient K album in outlook and cleverness, but it is something totally different in terms of mood and sound. It is indisputably the most focused album of their career, as well as the most serious. They command their sound and show themselves at their most intimate, honest, and sensitive. And man, they’re good at it.
I’ll be honest though. I didn’t like this all that much the first time I heard it. It is pretty fundamentally different from everything they’ve ever done. To be honest, it took several months for this to grow on me. The reason? When I first heard it my life was not in a place to mirror the mood of this album. It wasn’t until I needed Forget and Not Slow Down that I really understood it. The skill with which Relient K commentates on a rough time in a relationship is phenomenal. Musically and lyrically it manages to stay upbeat while struggling with its naturally downbeat mood. It feels like listening into the mind of the happy adolescent that loved “Sadie Hawkins Dance” but all of a sudden hits life and struggle but is trying so hard to stay optimistic. Forget and Not Slow Down is a complete rebuttal to the vindictive relationship-gone-bad style of music, in itself making all of Relient K’s old material seem better because it proves that the optimism shown in their early recordings really was honest to who they really are.
Musically, Forget and Not Slow Down is much more subdued than anything they’ve previously released. It could be poppier than anything previously released, but this moniker carries negative connotations that don’t apply here. It’s less mainstream, instead maybe showing tendencies towards indie pop while still embracing lots of traces of their pop punk foundations. “Savannah,” one of the album’s clear highlights, is boldly acoustic based and features one of Matt Thiessen’s best vocal performances in his career. Bouncy and subdued perfectly collide as Thiessen sings “Savannah, walk out into the sultry evening, cotton breathing when the sea winds brush the hair down around your neck, Savannah, you hold my hand like it's the first time, and all the feelings that our hearts find will be just what we expect.” Other tracks like the riff filled “Sahara” cleverly remarks “A lion on his side, was it the lying or his pride which brought him down?” and nicely utilizes guest appearances by
Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie,
House of Heroes’ Tim Skipper and
The Classic Crime’s Matt MacDonald. Other highlights includes the should-be-single “I Don’t Need a Soul” and beautifully introspective and reflective “Therapy.” The numerous intro and outro attracts are annoying for shuffling and playing individual tracks, but do add to the album as a whole and nicely act as segues between tracks. As a unit, the mood and sound of the album is appropriately positive and remorseful to accompany any rough patch.
Forget and Not Slow Down may come as a shock to some fans. It’s totally different from anything they’ve ever released. The young adolescents still caught up in the happy-go-lucky Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek and Two Lefts... may reject it as not true to themselves, but really this is the most true Relient K has ever been. They finally connect to themselves and write an album from their hearts, and it pays off huge. Certainly the most creative and artistic project of their careers, Forget and Not Slow Down succeeds in ways critics of early Relient K would never have predicted. Those who embrace it will not forget it, and those who refuse to will be put off. But I’ve got news for the latter. This is the best album of Relient K’s career. Enjoy.
“Oh, I don't need a soul to hold / without you I'm still whole / you and life remain beautiful/ you and life remain beautiful”
