It’s a shame I have to write this … because I like these guys.

I saw Relient K last summer at Cornerstone. The K played a festive set, covering the “Thundercats” theme and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” They also brought out a crowd surfing, stuffed buffalo. Some audience members merely passed around the buffalo, while other more adventurous crowd members mounted the buffalo and attempted to ride it.

Relient K put on a strong set. It’s too bad it can’t follow it up with this CD.

-This CD seems underdeveloped; the premise is juvenile. “Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right … but Three Do” is a palm-muted calamity of teenage heartbreak and other useless crap. Singer Matthew Thiessen is so loathsomely dependent on women that it’s a wonder he can manage being single and sane … at the same time. That still doesn’t mean he can’t write a catchy hook.

On the contrary, he writes many catchy hooks. But a catchy hook, or 20 catchy hooks for that matter, won’t guarantee a good album. It’ll just sell 1,000 albums.

The hook of “College Kids” (“Not for me/ Not for me/ Call it torture/ Call it u-ni-ver-si-ty/ No! Arts and crafts is all I need/ I’ll take calligraphy, and then I’ll make a fake degree”) is especially funny, but overall, the track lacks the depth to transcend the pop-punk stereotype. The same can be said for the majority of the disc.

Relient K’s instrumentation, consisting mainly of powerchords and the faint pitter-patter of piano keys, blends into a fine batter of poppy-punk Wonderbread.

Aside from the terribly trite lyrical matter, this disc suffers from overkilled vocals that drag.

Relient K somewhere picked up this idea that more vocals equal better vocals. Thus, we are left with material that’s brimming over with stupid lyrics, and even more stupid rhymes.

Case in point: “Mood Rings” devotes an entire three-and-a-half minutes to why girls should wear mood rings so that Thiessen can act accordingly. Although “Mood Rings” finishes with a knockout 25 seconds of finger-picking goodness, a fart of beauty can’t save this album from stinking.

Fifteen songs. Twenty-five seconds of goodness. Do the math