COLLECTIVE SOUL: Blood

Collective Soul have always been criminally under-appreciated. Even in their heyday, while they were amassing omnipresent radio hits, they were written off by the music-snob in-crowd as grunge bandwagoneers. But while so many other ‘90s powerhouses have fizzled out or spontaneously combusted, Collective Soul have stayed the arena rock course for a loyal fanbase. And if there’s any justice left in rock and roll, their tenth (yes, tenth) album Blood will prompt new appreciation for the Georgia quintet.

Blood opens with a three-minute, riff-driven anthem called Now’s The Time, and the album never diverts from that suggestion of immediacy. If you’re looking for up-tempo radio-ready singalongs, check out Right As Rain or Good Place To Start. Observation of Thought and Porch Swing are the album’s longest cuts at four minutes each, and they’re both shimmering hook-laden epics. Some songs are stronger than others, but there’s no outright fat on Blood- and that’s pretty amazing for a band that’s now 25 years old.

It’s tempting to use the term “dad rock.” But in an era of Queen blockbusters and Springsteen on Broadway, maybe that’s not a bad thing. Collective Soul have always come off as warm, easygoing, sometimes a little uncool but resoundingly competent- in a word, fatherly. Blood finds them easing off the pop sheen and leaning into their roles as elder-statesmen-Southern-gentlemen. A hint of drawl there, a slide guitar solo there, and the result still rocks without ever feeling hokey.

Their best albums are still 1995’s self-titled “blue album” and 1999’s Dosage. But Blood is just as hummable, and frontman/producer E Roland can still craft a song as big as Shine or December. Just catch one of the band’s rollicking, better-than-ever live shows, and note how well the new stuff blends in with the classics. Now’s the time, indeed. B+