These days it's easy to forget that there are a number of very good, hard-working rock bands still making good music, and playing to receptive audiences around the world. Consider Oleander, from Sacramento, California. Oleander plays "rock," and does it well, and without apology. As a matter of fact, singer/guitarist Thomas Flowers and bassist Doug Eldridge have been playing rock around northern California for over a decade. "As various bands broke up," Flowers says, " we stayed together and kept trying to move on. Once Flowers and Eldridge acquired Ric Ivanisevich as a guitarist. They began casting about for a name during band practices. Ivanisevich mentioned seeing some oleander bushes next to some railroad tracks near their practice space. Flowers and Eldridge figured it was oblique enough to pass muster. "It's so ambiguous that it could be a disco band or a death-metal band," Flowers explains. By late '96, Oleander had recorded an independently released CD, Shrinking the Blob; one of the local album-rock FM stations added a song from it, "Down When I'm Loaded." Oleander quickly attracted an enthusiastic hometown following, and in late 1998, the band signed with Republic Records. In late February, 1999, Oleander's aptly titled Republic/Universal debut, February Son, was released. The single "Why I'm Here" became the #1 track at rock radio, while February Son sold over half a million copies and spawned two more hits with "I Walk Alone" and "Stupid". Success, of course, didn't come without hard work. Oleander became a touring machine hooking up with such acts as Candlebox, Collective Soul, Creed, Our Lady Peace, and Filter. For 18 months, Oleander learned the ropes. "We were really fortunate," Flowers says. "We had the fortune of being groomed, not only by veterans, but really some of the best bands in the business. Candlebox and Collective Soul really took us under their wings and showed us how to do it right-how to have the proper work ethic. Creed gave us an opportunity to go and learn how to perform in an arena setting and make the most of it. Filter showed us Europe." He adds, "It's just a tremendous growing and learning process the whole way." For Flowers, keeping an open mind is important-as is practicing a certain amount of humility, perhaps as an inoculation against rock-star excess. "One of the things that I've loved about Oleander over the years," he says, "is that we've never taken ourselves so seriously that we thought we were worth so much that we could just shut down, that we'd arrived. Even to this day, we're still very humble and we're still very open-minded to all the learning that's out there." That hunger to learn came in handy when Oleander got ready to record its follow-up to February Son. You see, among other things, Flowers and company are ambitious, and they remember when rock bands took making all killer-no filler albums seriously. And they wanted to make a great album themselves. Even, given the ephemeral nature of rock as career, if it was their last shot. As Flowers puts it, "Our whole philosophy was, in this business, you never know how many chances you're going to get to do another album. If this was our last opportunity, we wanted to go out on our terms. And everything lined up and happened for the best." "The best" included the chance to work with the producer, Rick Mouser, who recorded their demos, at The Plant-formerly The Record Plant, the Sausalito, Calif. Studio where so many classic rock records were recorded. It was mixed by producer Andy Wallace, (Nirvana, Limp Bizkit, Jeff Buckley, Rage Against the Machine). The result is Unwind. The opening tracks "Come to Say" and "Yours If You Like" bear a stylistic, albeit more expansive, resemblance to the songs on February Son. By the third track, "Are You There," the band begins to shift gears, and it becomes increasingly apparent that 18 months of hard work on the road, followed by a couple of months recording and mixing, have made Oleander an even stronger musical force. What follows is "Halo," a lovely acoustic number backed by a string quartet. "That's the one song on the album I keep gravitating to," Flowers says. Eldridge adds '"Halo,' to me, is a timeless kind of tune," he says. "Tom wrote that song a long time ago, when we were doing demos for the first record. I remember hearing that song and thinking that's an amazing tune. When I heard the chorus for the first time, I was blown away." Oleander then kicks it back into high gear on "Benign," "Unwind," "Goodbye," "Jimmy Shaker Day," "She's Up, She's Down," "Back Home Years Ago." There's even a waltz, "Tight Rope," that builds from quietude to a climax. The whole thing can be compared to having a little sister grows up overnight, and one day you look at her and wonder how she got so beautiful all of a sudden. With Oleander, all the elements were there before: Thomas Flowers has a great arena-rock voice, and his rhythm guitar packs the required punch. Doug Eldridge and new drummer Scott Devours provide a solid rhythm section. The band's secret weapon, Ric Ivanisevich, is a guitarist who knows how to connect the dots between Abbey Road to Nevermind and points beyond. The songwriting is rock solid, with hooks that don't overwhelm but instead surprise; the songs vary from cut to cut, avoiding the generic sameness that some bands fall victim to. But on Unwind, the sum is greater than its parts. If you like rock albums, Oleander's got your number. "We just decided that we were going to make the most sincere effort to really explore what we wanted the music to sound like," Flowers says. "And I think we really hit the mark this time." Eldridge agrees "I think we still just want to be a rock band-one that puts on a heavy-hitting, hard-rocking live show." Gotta keep those priorities straight.