Blender (©2000 Atlantic)

The Songs: Skin / Vent / Why Pt.2 / 10 Years Later / Boast / Turn Around / You Speak My Language / Perfect Day (featuring Elton John) / After All / Over Tokyo / Happiness

I’m not sure about this one. It’s still a good paint by numbers album, it’s just that some of the colours don’t match. The album kicks off with "Skin" which is okay, the second song "Vent" has some weird funky I’m Prince / Mick Jagger doing Frankie Valli shit (whoop whoop profanity alert - oops too late) going on. It’s horrid. But they catch the magic again with "Why Pt.2" even if it sounds like their same old same old. "Perfect Day" is the song Elton John cameos on, and it’s okay. Elton is an icon and heck if I could get him to sing and play on one of my albums I would too.

This album doesn’t suck; it’s good enough for all that. Take some solid guitar riffs, mix in some banal overly repeated lyrics and it all all adds up to your standard rock act. Blender isn’t the best Collective Soul can do. Especially after Dosage this is definitely a major bump in their career. Here’s hoping they get a chance to do better.

Reviewed March 13, 2002

1: Better Now 2: Theres A Way 3: Home 4: How Do You Love? 5: Him 6: Feels Like (It Feels All Right) 7: Perfect To Stay 8: Counting The Days 9: Under Heaven's Skies 10: General Attitude 11: Satellite

The guys are back and thankfully this one is better than Blender. After the departure of their main electric twanger (taking his very tasty chops with him) Joel Kosche had the unenviable task of stepping into Ross Childress’ shoes. To be fair to Ed and Dean Collective Soul always had more than one guitar player, so although Ross was a major player in the “sound” department his departure wasn’t as devastating as I thought it would be.

When I heard the lads had a new album I was pretty skeptical - they’d more or less tanked for me after Blender (which is actually better than I’m giving it credit for) and add the loss of Ross I was more or less put this on expecting the worse. For some reason a little voice in my head said “Buy me, I’ll be good – I promise.” Since I’m used to hearing little voices in my head we chatted about this that and the other and before I knew it I was on my way with another new CD I don’t have shelf space for. Yet another reason to get rid of my copies of "Amazing Animal Sounds" and "Drunken Scottish Pipers play Enya" (what was that about? I don’t know, but I’ll leave it in, in case it’s important later on).

Where was I?

Anyway, so I was more or less had my negative bags packed and was ready to not like Youth. To my surprise the first couple of times through I thought it was pretty good, and I found myself warming to the album despite myself. True, it’s missing Ross, but Joel is a good player. Youth feels like a transition album (I can almost hear the guy “Wait’ll you hear the next one!”). It’ll be interesting to see what Joel’s musical voice sounds like once he’s allowed to cut loose and step out of Ross’ shadow. Musically the guys have mellowed and turned down the crunch, but it’s a natural progression and the music retains the best of what made Collective Soul stand out from the other ubiquitous bands out there. Which was a pleasant surprise.

Of course if you only liked their crunchy stuff and can’t come to terms with Ross’ departure you’ll no doubt find enough reasons to write this off. Or you could take a chance and find that this is actually much better than you were expecting.

Reviewed January 5, 2005

From the Groud Up (©2005 El Music Group)

1. Compliment 2. Youth 3. December 4. Perfect To Stay 5. Under Heaven's Skies 6. She Said 7. Counting The Days 8. Satellite

This is a delightful collection of stripped down songs by Collective Soul. The album leans heavily on songs from Youth, with five of the eight songs coming from the release. Of the older "hits" only "December" makes an appearance, and the dark and somber nature of the song really comes through. It was a risky thing to lean on the newer songs - it would have been a typically safe unplugged thing if the band had simply re-recorded it's big hits. Frankly I kind of like how this followed on the heals of Youth - it was like getting to hear polished demo recordings.

Collective Soul shows they aren't all crunch and layered guitars - they know how to write a good song, and by taking a bunch of songs back to ground level, they're able to showcase the songs for what they are: really good songs.

Reviewed March 1, 2008

Afterwards (©2007 El Music Group)

1. New Vibration 2. What I Can Give You 3. Never Here Alone 4. Bearing Witness 5. All That I Know 6. I Don't Need Anymore Friends 7. Good Morning After All 8. Hollywood 9. Persuasion of You 10. Georgia Girl 11. Adored

The boys are back again, and as odd as it sounds as they drop in popularity their albums get better and more cohesive. If the guys aren't careful they'll end up as a Zen Koen - "If Collective Soul releases a great album will anybody hear it?" Or to be an ass, would anybody care? Strange how a band who has had so much chart success and big hits doesn't seem to get any respect.

The band isn't breaking any new wind here, it's the same of crunch and chorus as before but there's no mistaking Collective Soul when they're on target. Speaking of which (what a slick segue) in the states Target is the only place (for a year) where you can pick up the CD (you can't fault them - after all the Eagles and Garth Brooks have done the same thing but with Wal-Mart). I suppose that's the way of the future - it seems to be working for some artists - Starbucks anyone?

But in this age of digital even dinosaurs such as myself are beginning to get music on-line (although one of the first things I do is rip it backwards so I can play it on my CD player) so how big a deal will such agreements be in the future? Only time will tell. There's still a lot to be said for liner notes.

If you enjoyed Youth and thought it was a nice return to form, you'll really like this one - because it's more of the some, just older. There are a number of killer songs here I'd stack up against the best the band has done. It deservers a listen. If you can't listen now, perhaps afterwards?

Reviewed December 28, 2007

PS I'll give a shout out to Y2D, because he was the first to let me know about this one.