Brenten Gilbert - CMCentral

On March 6, 2007, Gotee Records/Capitol will release Five Score And Seven Years Ago, Relient K’s fifth album in seven years and the follow up to 2004’s mmhmm, the band’s third consecutive Gold album.

The album, most of which was produced by Howard Benson in Los Angeles with three tracks completed thereafter with the band’s longtime producer Mark Townsend in Nashville, is a departure of sorts for the pop-punk band. For starters, there are some love songs – happy ones. “I always write about what I’m going through and I can’t avoid the fact that I’m just really happy and there are some good things going on,” says lead singer/guitarist/pianist Matt Thiessen. This happy state of mind lights up the exuberant first single “Must Have Done Something Right.” “This song represents something that I’ve wanted to create for a long time,” he explains. “It’s not a political commentary or a tear jerking emotion-piece, it’s just a feel good, fun song. Written at 3 a.m. with a smirk on my face, the song turned out to be something that you can tap your foot and smile to.”

Although Five Score And Seven Years Ago’s 14 songs are written in the first person, Thiessen has ventured beyond the confessional this time around. “Plead the Fifth” and “Deathbed,” the two songs that bookend the album, step into the shoes of a 19th century man with an intriguing conspiracy theory about Abraham Lincoln and an aging cancer patient respectively.

But while Five Score And Seven Years Ago isn’t packed with the band’s characteristic puns, Relient K has clearly not lost its quirky sense of humor. In “Faking My Own Suicide,” the narrator takes a cue from the classic cult comedy Harold and Maude, hatching a faux suicide plot to get the object of his affection to realize that she really does love him. “Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care,” which takes longer to say than to play, is a classic Relient K goofball aside. And while the 11-minute, 115-track “Deathbed,” which features Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman as a guest vocalist, has a somber setting as its title implies, the masterfully woven tale of a man’s life and last moments brims with keen observations and aural ironies.

Five Score And Seven Years Ago marks Relient K’s first full-length album featuring bassist John Warne and Jon Schneck, who plays guitar, banjo, and bells – although the two appeared on the band’s Apathetic EP, released in late 2005. With lead guitarist Matt Hoopes and drummer Dave Douglas completing the lineup, Relient K is now a quintet with each of the members contributing vocals. But the biggest change was in the control booth, working with Howard Benson.

“I was honestly pretty nervous,” confesses lead guitarist Matt Hoopes, “We’d never really worked with any other producer beside Mark Townsend – he did everything from our first demo, all the way up to the last album. But it was a good experience working with Howard.”

All kidding aside, Five Score And Seven Years Ago is an ambitious follow-up to mmhmm, Relient K’s first joint Gotee Records/Capitol release, which debuted at #15 on the Billboard 200 and at #1 on the internet chart in 2004. Praised by Alternative Press as “one of the best pop-punk releases of the year,” mmhmm yielded the Top 20 singles “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” and put the band on the road non-stop, including tours with Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, MXPX and a main stage slot on the 2005 Vans Warped Tour. Relient K wraps up the 2006 Nintendo Fusion tour on November 11th in Chicago.

The track listing for Five Score And Seven Years Ago is as follows:

1. Plead the Fifth
2. Come Right Out and Say It
3. I Need You
4. The Best Thing
5. Forgiven
6. Must Have Done Something Right
7. Give
8. Devastation And Reform
9. I’m Taking You With Me
10. Faking My Own Suicide
11. Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care
12. Bite My Tongue
13. Up And Up
14. Deathbed

For the latest information, visit: http://www.relientk.com