mmhmm – Relient K

Time for another album review. This is another of my top albums. It is mmhmm by Relient K. This is the album that was their BIG hit album, and I totally get it. It has so many great songs. Don’t get me wrong I like a lot of their music on their albums as well, but this album is a pretty great album from beginning to end and that is why I think it is a perfect album. As usually I am going to work through the album from beginning to end.

It starts with “The One I’m Waiting For”. It is a rock song in my opinion. There is a lot of guitar an and drums to lead things in. It is loud and fast. It slows down at moments to remind us that the singer is “still waiting for you to be the one I’m waiting for”. It is a love song about a girl that he wants. To me this is the high school love song until by a “geek/nerd” that is looking for that great girl. She is the one everyone wants, but he knows that she will one day come around. There are lines about how others are telling him to be realistic. Oh, how that brings back memories for me from high school. There were girls I liked, but my friends were like, “no way, move on, never gonna happen”. The song talks about having patience while waiting for the girl. So, maybe the chorus is about him realizing that he needs to wait for the right girl rather than the one he thinks he wants.

Coming in at song two is “Be My Escape”. Another rock intro. Hard hitting drums and guitars rocking away. I really like that in the intro to this song the mixing was done so that the guitars alternate between the left and right channels. It is something not done quite as much anymore, and it draws me into the song. This song talks about hiding things like insecurity and doubt. That there is no outlet for him for these things that are bothering him. He knows he needs to “get out of here” when it comes to the “locked house” he has trapped himself in of doubts, etc. This is speaking to those that have that depression/doubt/anxiety that so many people have and how they tend to lock it all in. And the singer is “begging you to be my escape”. Who is the you? This is a song sung to God. In the second verse he talks about how he knows that he needs out and that the “beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair”. Sometimes things are going to be hard, but the grace of God can save us. There is a bridge that asked God to use him in anyway that He can, but that he can’t “ask You (God) to give what He already gave”. God has already sacrificed Himself for us, we just need to accept that and get His help. The doubts keep us from allowing Him to free us, “All the while You hold the key” to the locked house of doubt. The ending you get a soft piano part and he sings “I fought you for so long, I should have let you win. Oh how we regret those things we do. All I was trying to do was save my own skin, but so were You.” God has saved us.

At number three you get the hit song on the album “High of 75”. This song made its rounds on the radio (and not just Christian radio stations). This is clearly another song about depression and doubts that can persist in our lives. Another fast rock beat to keep the lyrics and story going throughout the song. “And tomorrow I know will be rainy at best, and the forecast I know is that I’ll be depressed” Here is he just crying for help, and the next line says, “but I’ll wait outside hoping that I’ll catch sight of the sun.” Of course that sun is the Son of Man, Jesus. The song uses the analogy of weather to talk about the dark times and the sun that makes things better. In the chorus you get the great line that “It’s funny how you find you enjoy your life, when you’re happy to be alive.” That is so true. That is how I live my life. I am so happy and joy-filled to be alive and that makes life so much better. Even on the cloudy days things are better because I have the light of the Son in my life. In verse 2 you have a line about how relationships can break up if the cloudy days stay around too long. This certainly happens in the world we live in. But having that light of the Son can make it better.

After that song you get “I So Hate Consequence”. Bringing in another hard start to a song, yelling “Good, Good, Good to Go. I have to get away from all of my mistakes.” The first verse talks about how he is focusing on all his mistakes and all he wants to do is get away from them. There are things that are preventing him from doing that though “red lights”. He wants to move on, and “If my heart says I’m sorry, can we leave it at that?” Clearly there are relationship things going on here. He just wants, “all of it to end”. Because he hates consequences. Of course consequences are a part of life. It would be nice to just move on, but that isn’t something we can do very often. He is so good at running away, and he doesn’t want God to make him face up to things. Oh too bad man. He knows he is doing things wrong and letting someone down, but he doesn’t want to deal with it. I am a bit like this. I don’t like confrontation and when things go wrong I don’t always like dealing with it at the time. I would rather move on. I don’t run away, but I tend to push things aside. It isn’t the best thing to do. “And I know I can’t go on like this much longer.” He knows this isn’t a way to live life, but consequences are hard to deal with. The song ends with another calm piano part where he proclaims, “When I got tired of running from you, I stopped right there to catch my breathe. There Your words they caught my ear, you said ‘I miss you son, come home’. And my sins they watched me leave, and in my heart I so believed, the love you felt for me was mine, the love I wished for all this time. And when the doors were closed, I heard no I told you so’s. I said the words I knew you knew, ‘Oh God, Oh God I needed you, God all this time I needed you I needed you’” That is just what we need. We need God, even if running from God is our best defense (in our minds), it turns out we are wrong and we need God. This song may be based on the Prodigal Son story from the Bible. Not sure. I love this ending. There are a few songs on this CD like that.

Number 5 you get “The Only Thing Worse than Beating a Dead Horse is Betting on One”. Just a hard hitting quick song that just simply states that things in life are hard and that there isn’t always a good answer. I like the line, “Paper, Rock and Scissors, they all have their pros and cons”. That is so true for life. There are lots of good choices. There aren’t always best choices.

The next song is their other hit off the album with “My Girl’s Ex-Boyfriend”. The title kind of explains what the song is about – the guy that used to date the girl the singer it talking about. The singer talks about how his life is so blessed to be with this girl and how the other guy now realizes that he was wrong for dumping her. The guitars sections are nice and the drums are good, but the truth is this isn’t on my favorites on this album. While most of us can find some connection with this song in that each of us likely are married to / dating / connected to someone that at one time was with someone else. So, we are the ones that are blessed now by that person that is no longer with the one we are with now. “I owe it all to the mistake he made back then.”

On to number 7 with “More Than Useless”. This songs opens with guitars and then the drums come in after a few measures. A song about how at times we feel like we “want to be somewhere else, doing something that matters.” This song talks all about how there are times in like when we don’t feel like our lives matter. That what we are doing doesn’t amount to anything. So what is the purpose of doing anything at all. Then during the chorus there is the line “But then You assure me, I’m a little more than useless.” It may not be a resounding – You’re great! but it is reality at times that we aren’t ever useless. We are more than useless. We have value to someone or something at some time. And we are always useful in God’s eyes. We just need to figure out where He is directing us to be useful. During the second verse he talks about how he wants to do something significant, but then at the end of the day he realizes that his days have been empty. So, again useless, but no he is more than useless, and has a purpose. We don’t know if today is the day that we do something that is really useful, so live each day looking for ways to be useful.

After that great song you get “Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet?” a song about relationships and what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget when it comes to being in the relationship. Talk about a great topic. There are so many times in life when one person or the other in a relationship will bring up “that one time when you…” to tear the other person down. It is about working through the problems. I love the chorus lines of “No I don’t hate you, don’t want to fight you. Know I’ll always love you but right now I just don’t like you.” Can’t we all agree to this at times. The key is that we need to work on ways to move past the pain and get back to the fact that the love will survive. Sometimes one will take things too far, and that is a decision that the person can make, but again the key is that you can’t let it go too far. The song has lighter verses and then louder choruses. It is good because it gets the point across that the reason for the fighting is there, but the coming back together is more important. The bridge talks about one person trying to be there for the other person, but the one that is angry not wanting anything to do with that person, and all the while “…know I’ll always love you.” The love is still there so fight for it. The song end here with a somber piano section and it certainly seems like the couple has broken up, which is sad, and a reminder that we need to fight FOR our relationships.

From there you move into “Let It All Out”. This is a quite song. You have a nice piano throughout. The drums are there, but they are subtle and in the background. This is a great song all about the times when you have to “Rip it out, Remove it” and get rid of the things that are causing the pain. When something is going in ones life that is causing issues you just have to work on getting it out. And that may mean someone coming along and saying something or doing something that may lead to hurt. In chorus it says, “You said I know that this will hurt, but if I don’t break your heart then things will just get worse.” There are times when this is exactly what one needs to hear or have happen to them to get them to wake up and move on. The song ends with almost an aside and it is made clear, to me at least, that the person trying to help is God. It ends with “Reach out to me; make my heart brand new. Every beat will be for you, for you. And I know you know, You touched my life. When you touched my heavy heart, and made it light.” Only God can really bring light to ones life. We need that light to lift us up and that may mean breaking us sometimes.

Song number 10 on the album is “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” brings us back to the rock, well sort-of. This intro is hard and loud, and then right when you think the shouts of a verse will start it drops down to just a piano. Another song about covering up who we are to others. We don’t want others to see the sin and filth in our lives, and even if we aren’t followers of Christ we do this. We have the ugliness in our lives and we don’t like it; so we hide it. the chorus ramps back up to full rock. It talks about things like “See that line, well I never should have crossed it” and “Well I never should have said that.” and “It’s the very moment moment that I wish that I could take back”. Talk about lines that everyone can agree that they have said at some moment in their lives. The second half of the chorus is an apology for not changing, and that “Who I am, hates who I’ve been” and that they need to be a better person. The second verse talks about things they see in ones life where they almost blow up, or the see the steps leading to issues occurring and how they need to be more observant to prevent those things from happening. This is what living a life in Christ leads to. It doesn’t mean we are perfect, oh no. It means we see the imperfections in our lives and ask for help from God. We trust the Holy Spirit to prevent us from doing those wrong things, or those things again. The song ends with the admission that we need that second chance from God.

Then you get “Maintain Consciousness“. A song about paying attention. The words aren’t that profound and the music is fine. It is a comment on the fact that people can’t keep focused on anything. This song was written in the mid-2000s and it is so much worse now. The young people today, I just had to write that, talk about things lasting no longer that 10 minutes or they lose interest. I just heard someone the other day saying that sitting through a 60 minute TV show that was really good was too long and would rather have had it broken into two 30 minute shows or even three 20 minute shows. My thought is, “You can control that on your own, just pause it and come back later to it.” But the fact was that they didn’t have the attention span for an hour program. I get distracted, don’t get me wrong, but I am not that bad. Back to the song though, a quick less than 3 minute song about how we get bored or find monotony in things so easily.

A fun sounding song with “This Week the Trend” comes in at number 12. Another rock song about how we, as humans, can be fickle about what interests us. And then how we try to have those things sustain us but in the end they can’t. That is how the song starts off really. It is about just making it to the weekend. Waking up late because that is what “I” want to do. Thinking that, “I had it all figured out, way back then.” “But after this day, it’s this week all over again” and so you have to just start over again to get through it all. Even when the solution is given to us we may try and use it, but then we allow ourselves to just waste it and then start the week all over again. We are “Stuck watching our lives blow up.” rather than working to use the solutions that are given to us. Instead we just stick with the weekly trend.

Not quite done yet. You get “Life After Death and Taxes (Failure II)”. A song that opens with hard hitting drums and a guitar. This song is about salvation, at least I think it is. The song talks about how no matter the situation you are in that God has saved me. The chorus does a great job of this with the lyrics, “After all the stupid things I did, there’s nothing left that you’d forgive, because You ALREADY forgave me.” So, Jesus already paid the price for my sins and even though people still make mistakes and sin He has forgiven those sins. In the second verse he talks about how you just keep going to the end and no matter what comes up you just move on and, “Think about the life I’ll have, when this fragile one is gone.” A statement about how one day believers will have a new body that is perfect from God. As the final line says, “Death and decay can’t touch us now.” So true with Jesus as our Savior

And Finally you get “When I Go Down”. This is one of my favorite songs on the album. This is a softer song. You have an acoustic guitar and a piano going throughout, just kind of moving your through the song. The first verse starts with talking about how we pray that our problems will just go away if we ignore them, “But that’s not the way it works, No that’s not the it works.” How true. The chorus then hits us with “When I go down, I go down hard…It hurts to hit the bottom. And all the things that got me there, I think, if only I had fought them.” Talk about a great chorus. It is so true we let things tear us down, and sometimes we end up hitting the bottom, and all we had to do was fight those things that were tearing us down. Or turn to God for help. The second verse talks about the things we throw away in life that we shouldn’t and that could have been more to help us in life. And then we just have prayer, but not the right prayer. We pray for the problems to go away when we ignore them. Then we hit the third verse, and the singer realizes that “Any control I thought I had, just slips right through my hands.” And then he says, “I confess, I’ll blame all this on my selfishness. Yet you love me, and that consumes me, and I’ll stand up again and do so willingly.” God has restored him. The song then goes into a section about how God gives one hope, and how that hope is the full restoring of the person. There is nothing he can say to make things right because, “from my lips the words I choose to say seem pathetic, but it’s a fallen man’s praise. Because I love you, Oh God I love you”. Then you hear, “And life is now worth living, if only because of you, and when they say that I am dead and gone, it won’t be further from the truth.” And that is the saving grace of God. He makes our lives worth living even when times are bad. The song ends with the chorus again, but with a change of hope: “When I go down, I lift my eyes to You, I won’t look very far, cause You’ll be there, with open arms. To lift me up again”

Truly a great album. They hit the rock really well, but their softer songs ring really true and hit the heart hard. I will rarely skip one of these songs if it comes up on my random listening.

And I just realized that this is the 20th anniversary of the album as well. Rock on!