Mysteries Of Life – Distant Relative

Bloomington, Indiana, five-piece the Mysteries Of Life are major-label refugees featuring members of Antenna, the Blake Babies and the Vulgar Boatmen. Distant Relative, their first album for their own label, is, quite adamantly, a pop record. Airy and earnest, it’s a jangly and largely acoustic offering reminiscent of the best Marshall Crenshaw records of the early ’80s.

Several tracks are overlaid with an occasional electronic flourish. Those touches (most evident on the fine opener, “I Just Bet”) are seamless and mild; Distant Relative is certainly the only Mysteries Of Life record you can dance to.

Lead singer-songwriter Jake Smith has a voice made for a Top 40 pop band, and has an unrelenting lack of irony that serves him well, mostly. Despite the occasional lyrical misses (“T-1”, “Boy-Girl-Boy-Girl”) and mystifying clunkers (“Back And Forth”), Distant Relative is, if not MOL’s finest outing, their strongest since 1998’s Come Clean. There’s nothing here as weirdly riveting as, say, the group’s infamous cover of Otis Redding’s “That’s How Strong My Love Is”, but it may be the only example since the Jayhawks’ Smile of a happy marriage between alt, pop, country and grooves.