Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid [Atlantic]

Performer: Collective Soul
Engineer: Matthew Serletic; Ed Roland; Matt Serletic
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Collective Soul: Ed Roland (guitar, vocals), Dean Roland, Ross Childress (guitar), Will Turpin (bass), Shane Evans (drums). Additional personnel: Joe Randolph (guitar), Melissa Ortega, Jun-Ching Lin, David Braitberg (violin), Paul Murphy (viola), Daniel Laufer (cello), Matthew Serletic (keyboards, trombone), Brian Howell (bass). Producers: Ed Roland, Matthew Serletic, Joe Randolph. Recorded at Rising Storm Studios, Atlanta, Georgia; Real To Reel Studios, Stockbridge, Georgia; MSE Studios, Miami, Florida. All songs written by Ed Roland. Fronted by guitarist-songwriter Ed Roland, Collective Soul is the rock and roll Cinderella story of 1994. Hailing from Stockbridge, Georgia, Collective Soul is an upbeat, rootsy Southern guitar band with a critical difference--the solos never supercede the songs. In fact, eleven of the thirteen songs that make up HINTS, ALLEGATIONS AND THINGS LEFT UNSAID were originally conceived of as a songwriter's demo (at a time when Roland had lost all hope of ever getting a record company deal). Roland and Collective Soul pressed their own CDs, and as a lark, sent one along to WRAS-FM, the influential Atlanta college station. Later, when two Orlando stations picked up on "Shine," Collective Soul began selling discs at a platinum rate, and Atlantic honchos inked them for a major league push. Still, this fairy tale begins, not with a wave of hype, but with Roland's accomplished tunes and Collective Soul's sweet and scrappy arrangements--this is a band with a canned heat heart and a grunge epidermis. You can hear many echoes of the singer-archetypes Roland had in mind for his "demos" on "All" (the Beatles), "In A Moment" (Ric Ocasek), "Heaven Is Already Here" (Van Morrison) and "Reach" (Rod Stewart). Yet in the end it's Roland himself who emerges as a soulful vocalist--much more than the sum of his influences. Collective Soul is living proof that good things come to bands that stay true to their muse and have the courage to go out and grow their own. Personnel: Ed Roland (vocals, guitar); Dean Roland, Ross Childress (guitar); Jun-Ching Lin, David Braitberg (violin); Paul Murphy (viola); Daniel Laufer (cello); Matt Serletic (trombone, keyboards); Shane Evans (drums). Audio Mixers: Ed Roland; Matt Serletic. Recording information: MSE Studios, Miami, FL (1993); Real To Reel Studios, Stockbridge (1993); Rising Storm Studios, Atlanta, GA (1993). Collective Soul never claimed it was an alt-rock band, but it arrived with the debut Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid when anything with guitars was marketed as anti-establishment, underground rock. In retrospect, it's sort of hard to see how this record, with its loving debts to Southern rock and AOR anthems, ever shared airplay on modern rock radio stations and 120 Minutes, but that's just the way things were in the heady days of 1994. Ironically, Collective Soul succeeded where cult heroes Urge Overkill couldn't -- making late-'70s arena rock popular. Urge, of course, was a band of hardcore ironists, where the members of Collective Soul were dogged traditionalists, which sells better with a mainstream audience, and that's part of the reason why this debut was a hit. The other reason is that the band hits the riff jackpot a couple of times here: "Wasting Time" and "Love Lifted Me" are strong classicist rock, but "Shine" is a tremendous guilty pleasure, built on a guitar riff so indelible you swear it's stolen, blessed by a sighing melody that makes this a fine album-rock single that would have sounded as good in '74 as it did in '94. This is the song that signaled that the group had the skills and smarts to be a first-rate singles band, even if the rest of the record vacillates between pleasant and forgettable filler. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Entertainment Weekly (5/27/94, p.88) - "...they occasionally mix classical and industrial sounds into jangly metal...Bubble-gum grunge: an idea whose time has come...." - Rating: B+

Riding the crest of the grunge movement as it crashed on the shores of mainstream rock, Georgia's Collective Soul showed up in the mid 1990s with everything rock fans wanted, and now expect, from their radio stars: big, compressed, gut-wrenching guitars, sensitive lyrics and emotive wailing that presaged emo vocals, and hooks galore. Their debut album went double-platinum, largely due to the lovely power ballad "Shine." They continued to release solid, hit-spawning albums for Atlantic Records, but left after a greatest-hits package in 2001, and began self-releasing their recordings to a still-enthusiastic base of loyal fans.

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