Fifteen years later, these are the only things I know for sure: Relient K is a Christian rock band, and “Mmhmm” is the group’s breakout fourth record. Everything else feels up for debate.
As if falling through the air, Relient K’s fourth album “Mmhmm” picks up speed as it goes along, rocking faster and faster until it reaches its first objectively existential moment. It comes halfway through Track 4 (“I So Hate Consequences”).
“Consequences” is preceded by a song that sounds like the guitarist is trying to snap the strings on his acoustic and, perhaps, rocks harder than any other song on the album. But at the 2:30 mark, it comes to a screeching halt.
“When I got tired of running from you,” Matt Thiessen sings, “I stopped right there to catch my breath.”
This piano break is, of course, drowned out by 25 seconds of distorted reprise before bleeding into Track 5, a minute-long punk adulation called “The Only Thing Worse Than Beating A Dead Horse Is Betting On One.”
Did “Mmhmm” benefit from the fact that it was only vaguely religious?
Fifteen years later, these are the only things I know for sure: Relient K is a Christian rock band, and “Mmhmm” is the group’s breakout fourth record. Everything else feels up for debate. “Mmhmm” is as punk as it is preachy, a tapestry that never features the same idea twice in a row.
The first half of the album (through Track 6, “My Girl’s Ex-Boyfriend”) runs about 17 minutes. In those 17 minutes, the band makes just about every sound it can conceivably make (doing so, for the most part, about as fast as they can). Fifteen years later, I still can’t shake the thought that this is a young rock group using speed to will itself out from under the Christin umbrella. I always stop thinking this at that 2:30 mark of Track 4, which sounds more like a hymn than a rock song.
And fifteen years later, I find myself asking the same questions: did “Mmhmm” benefit from the fact that it was only vaguely religious? And did Relient K do this on purpose?
One of the first things I learned about Relient K was that the band was Christian. It was somehow an unavoidable piece of information. The album’s hits “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” (which somehow doesn’t appear on the album until Track 10) aren’t about god until they are, an insinuation that seems to be handed to every listener as soon as they find out about Relient K.
But “Mmhmm” isn’t a gimmick record. It isn’t a punk group disguising itself, it’s a punk group transcending itself. It’s khaki rock at its best, soaring because of (as opposed to in spite of) this practice of never placing two similar ideas next to each other. This is most obvious at two points (the 2:00 mark of “Which to Bury: Us or the Hatchet” and the 1:25 mark of “Maintain Consciousness”) where a new idea is introduced, seamlessly, taking the record in a new and exciting direction.
Intentional or not, it worked — just about well enough to stop me from trying to figure out why.
-download or stream the full discussion on ‘Mmhmm’ below-
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