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Stavesacre :: "Speakeasy"

© Jon Hodges

On November 16, 1999, the long-awaited release of Stavesacre's third CD hit record stores and Christian bookstores around the country. Prior to release, this third CD left people a little curious due to the original guitar player having abandoned the band to pursue a family. Still the record came out on time with a new guitar player at helm, and while the music may sound somewhat different, it's the same Stavesacre we all know and love.

"Speakeasy" introduces people to the softer side of Mark Solomon and the rest of the spiritual lineup we've come to know as Stavesacre, the premiere rock band in Christian music. The first CD, "Friction," was more mellow than their second, "Absolutes," but certain aspects (including the drummer who had a rather ferocious approach to his ingredient of the music) made it easily recognizable as the same band on their sophomore release. And although the lead singer, Mark Solomon, has a very patented voice that can't be mistaken for any other singer, Christian or secular, if he were subtracted from "Speakeasy," any Stavesacre fan might mistake the new CD for another, newer band making its way onto the scene.

Between constantly having two guitar parts, something that increases the depth from their previous two CDs, and playing more on chord after chord after chord instead of tossing in arpeggios behind the chorus, the "Speakeasy" album can be classified as both better and worse. But when both sides of the scale are fully loaded, the better side definitely tilts higher.

The album starts off with "Minuteman," a song that contains the usual story-telling style of Mark's lyrics. But as with almost every Stavesacre song ever written, the song quickly pulls you into Stavesacre's unique style of music that is hard to classify between hard rock and simply rock.

The second song, "Sundown Motel," takes you even higher with an instantly infections guitar riff that finally breaks through after the first few bars of what sounds like is going to be a punk song. And like the majority of this album, it is a very upbeat song, something Stavesacre has tended to drift away from two or three times per CD in the past. With more influential, poetic lyrics, Mark takes us through another story about moving on that includes a phrase that I haven't been able to forget since I first heard it: "They'll say we love the darkness, but I'll say we hate the half-light."