Stavesacre -- Collective

8/10

My first year of college, I commuted. It was only a half-hour drive, out of the country and over the bridge to the big city, 25 minutes if I sped and traffic was light. However, as freshman year drew to a close, I decided I should spend sophomore year as a quasi-adult, in a just-barely off-campus apartment. Little did I know, quasi-adulting would leave me broke and feeling homesick. I toyed around with the idea of living back at my parents' house in the country for winter break--and my car suddenly and inexplicably breaking down just as finals week came to a close sealed the deal.
That break ended up being magical. I had already ended that fall semester of 2001 on a bit of a high (how could any semester that end with Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring not!), but the vibes that winter were just so pure. My siblings and parents and I got along swimmingly. LSU's over-achieving football team both made it to and won the SEC Championship for the first time, and then made it to and won the Sugar Bowl. I got lots of time on my still shiny Nintendo GameCube. Friends came by and we had special times. And then, in a true South Louisiana miracle, on New Years Eve night, it snowed. I also frequently listened to Stavesacre's just-released, and very comforting compilation, Collective.
Collective features 13-tracks. The first five are taken from Stavesacre's first two albums, Friction (1996) and Absolutes (1997). I don't have those two albums, but I've heard them riding around with my cousin Rhett in his car, and these five relaxed, leg-stretching hard rock songs are good representatives. They're slightly indebted in sound to Tool, but only slightly. They've definitely got an otherwise unique "Stavesacre" vibe, though they don't reach the high-water mark of quality and diversity found in the band's stellar third album, Speakeasy (1999).
With Speakeasy having only been released two years earlier, and with the band either tired of touring behind those songs, or maybe just wanting to give their fans something special, Collective offers up three completely re-recorded and reworked versions of Speakeasy standouts. The first is an absolutely beastly version of my favorite Speakeasy track, the driving "Rivers Underneath." This "Rivers Underneath" takes the themes of depression and hopelessness, and fully realizes them by giving the song a sort of "Dark Christmas" vibe, with sleigh bells and other accouterments. This take also features a new menacing guitar lead-line and drum fills by Sam West that defy listener's expectations in light of his playing in the original version. The drumming is shiftier, more complex, and gives the listener less steady ground to hold onto. The song also features an extended outro beyond vocalist, Mark Salomon's "I'll see you when I see you"..."Save me now/If you think you can/Don't turn away/You'll never see my face again," and this time he's backed my strings.
Lest Collective turn dark, the next Speakeasy reworking is a sublime, more acoustic version of "Keep Waiting" that's super groovy. The Speakeasy trio is then closed out by one of Stavesacre's best known songs, an absolutely gorgeous and heart-rending version of "Gold and Silver," led by piano, strings, programmed drums, an emotive performance by Salomon, and a beautiful background female vocal by Shelly Dael Walker. It's wintry bliss.
With the meat of Collective out of the way, the rest of the album is straight-forward fun, with a couple of upbeat tracks from the band's split-EP with Denison Mars from earlier that year, a punchy new song called "Rise," and a zesty cover of X's "The Hungry Wolf." Collective ends in, for a fan, the most pleasant manner possible, with a funny outtake of the band pranking Salomon as they begin their live take of the Western-vibing "El Mariachi." Stavesacre then play through an extremely enjoyable version of the song before, of course, pranking Salomon again right at the end. Collective ends with the band cutting up, and closing out 50+ minutes of comfort food for the Stavesacre fan's soul.
Of course, the cynic can look at Collective and say that, as it's the last album the band put out on Tooth & Nail Records before jumping to a new label, it's just an easy way for the band to close out their contract. While that may be true, it's also true that Collective, even for a Stavesacre newcomer, is fine collection of music. I'm not a college sophomore anymore, playing fetch with my old dog back home, throwing a ball into an icy, sunset-reflecting crawfish pond. I just listened to Collective jogging through a city suburb, a few weeks away from 38. It still sounds good.

That break ended for me at the Baton Rouge airport. My friend, Emmanuel, who I'd met after he'd come to LSU from the Ivory Coast, had stayed with a family in Atlanta for the holidays. I'd promised to give him a ride to his dorm when he landed back in Baton Rouge. I waited for him a couple hours after his flight landed, but he never showed. Finally, my phone rang, and I found out that he'd liked Atlanta so much, he'd decided to stay there. After a while I went out and left the airport and walked back to my apartment in the rain. Nah, just kidding, my car was fixed by then, so, now used to quasi-adulting, I drove back to my apartment and had a pretty rad semester.

2001 Tooth & Nail Records
1. At the Moment 05:41
2. Threshold 05:04
3. Tranewreck 01:37
4. Colt . 45 10:49
5. Zzyzx 00:50
6. Rivers Underneath 06:27
7. Keep Waiting 04:40
8. Gold and Silver 04:55
9. Night Town 04:13
10. Sad Parade 04:41
11. Rise 02:59
12. The Hungry Wolf 03:55
13. El Mariachi 05:17