The Collapse sound is thematic, Western, and driving. Guitars stumble like drunken Klondike prospectors; the rhythm section is the horse and carriage they make off with. Jenny Kost’s commanding voice leads the band’s taut arrangements through songs of love, life, and long forgotten ghosts set beneath the endless prairie skies.

Guitarist John Hadley and bassist Ken Price met as teenagers in the small town of Olds, Alberta, collectively fascinated by the sound of Brave New Waves and the record collections brought into town by older, worldlier friends. Without a resident music scene into which to channel their growing fascinations, their tastes ran wild, encompassing everything from their parents’ easy listening records to the avant-garde soundscapes they caught on late night radio.

Although ensuing the years scattered them throughout the province, they were reunited late in 2003 and with guitarist/keyboardist Patrick Palardy and drummer Mike Angus, formed the first incarnation of the Collapse: a sprawling, democratic beast of a band that drew freely from a variety of influences, shared vocal duties and let no ambition go unchecked. The Collapse released the independent record, Kills 56, in early 2006, receiving praise for their genre-bending approach and free-wheeling live shows. Mike Angus departed later that year to form Edmonton country-rock band The Wheat Pool, leaving the Collapse without a drummer or strong vocalist.

Bruised but undeterred, the Collapse forged on. While Hadley put in time on guitar with Calgary space-pop outfit Light City Fiction, the band recruited Jordan Schenstead of Saskatoon’s From Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z on drums and played a few local shows. They next added Ken’s roommate Jenny Kost, former singer of Calgary’s revolution rockers The Martyr Index. Palardy left the band shortly after to focus on his career as a live sound and recording engineer. Turning up the amps and narrowing their focus to a country-damaged rock sound the Collapse merged their love of story based songwriting with a charged-up approach to live playing.