After years playing in some of this town’s more interesting roots-rock bands (Bad Mayo, Schatzy, and the Fessters), it makes sense that bassist Dave Stover would want to drop the first name from his new project and his professional life, for the duration of this CD, at least. It makes even more sense once you listen to the music behind the name; Stover (the album) is a perfect blend of all the music that’s been filtered through Stover (the man) after lo these many and varied gigs.

You can hear Bad Mayo’s damaged alt.country, Schatzy’s bent art-pop and the Fessters’ jam-band sensibilities all at once on songs like “Falling Again Falling,” which burbles menacingly for a half-minute or so before evolving into a taut, folky, yet dark college-rock groove and spiraling into squalls of overdubbed guitar frenzy before subsiding into the psycho-Jell-O echo of the link track “A Fine Fuzzy Line.” If you can follow all that, you’re halfway to buying this CD. If that doesn’t do it for you, try “Makeup,” which centers itself around the line “Let’s fuck and make up.” Gotcha!

Dave’s main weakness—his somewhat flat, anonymous voice—is still following him around, but he doesn’t take lead much here; indeed, Dave uses these ten originals (some co-written by the Fessters’ Dave James) as a showcase for his songwriting talents, which remain impressive. And while the mix buries his vocals deep, it also mires some of the lead guitar work and airbrushes out some of the more dynamic interplay of the band. (About that band: Stover functions as a collective of New Orleans’ finest roots-rock vets, meaning members of the aforementioned groups are all here somewhere.) Still, Stover works wonderfully; its namesake hopscotches around between vocals, guitar, bass, tuba, and percussion, and yet you get his vision even when he’s letting others do the talking. Stover changes personae, instruments, and bands like other people change their shirts. But it all looks good on him.