Send "Sloan " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 The title of Sloan's new album is an oblique reference to the band's age. The Double Cross = XX = 20, for the 20 years they've been a band, the same four guys making records and touring together, with all the attendant peaks and valleys of notoriety that come with that. They've been one of the world's great power pop bands that whole time-- hell, they've just been a great rock band-- and that's an oddly thankless achievement. They've never matched up with the flavor of the moment, or seemed to try to either, and it makes them easy to overlook, because people are always talking more loudly about something else.But they've made a lot of music with staying power, records stuffed with great songs that sound good any time. Go back and listen to Between the Bridges, Never Hear the End of It, or One Chord to Another. They haven't aged a day. And here, 20 years in, they've made one of their best albums to mark the occasion. It comes three years after their last album, which matches the longest gap of their career, and even with all that time between to work on new material, it's still their shortest full-length, topping out under 35 minutes (longer with the iTunes bonus tracks). That brevity and focus turns out to be an asset, though-- there is no fat at all on the album, and every song is lasered into the shape that gives it the biggest impact. Four last less than two minutes and five seconds, and yet nothing feels slight or too short. Part of the reason for that is that the album is expertly assembled to work as a seamless whole, much like Between the Bridges and Never Hear the End of It were. It's not a random collection of songs they happened to have around. "Beverley Terrace" reprises "Shadow of Love", and there are other call-backs on the album, not to mention the fact that songs are sequenced so that opening and closing tempos match up, and even the key changes sound good as one song turns into another. The band has also worked hard to broaden its sound. This is the lushest Sloan album, with several keyboard-driven tracks and a couple of heart-stopping ballads to give it a more varied landscape. Though it's clearly structured to flow as an album and function as an absorbing start-to-finish listen, The Double Cross is still the kind of record that makes you want to talk about every song individually. Nearly any of them could work as a single. "The Answer Was You" is built around what sounds sort of like a Mellotron flute figure, with a hint of disco lurking in its rhythm guitar part. "Laying So Low" is the slow closer; it opens like an after-hours drag but quickly blossoms into something stirring. On "Your Daddy Will Do", Sloan, possibly by accident, manage to sort of diagnose the reason they're still making great rock records even though they've never been in fashion doing it: "They kind of lost touch with what's in and who's who." "Unkind" is the sort of stomping power pop tune that made them hitmakers on their Canadian home turf....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Toward the end of 2001, the with so-called garage rock revival quickly gathering steam, RCA Records briefly turned its attention to Sloan, a frustratingly undervalued band of power pop geniuses who appeared doomed to remain a cult act outside of their native Canada. RCA arranged for a proper U.S. roll-out for the band’s Pretty Together album and sent them out on the road with their signature signing, a scruffy NYC act called the Strokes. This seemed like can’t-miss programming at the time. Both bands were full of snazzy dressers who dabbled in the sounds of yesteryear. The major label execs were probably hoping the kids wouldn’t notice that the guys in Sloan were in their mid 30s. While the RCA association and subsequent tours with flavor-of-the-moment acts like Jet did little to raise the band’s profile, Sloan would carry on undeterred and somehow continue to hit new creative peaks with every new release. Very few people would’ve predicted that Sloan would have a better decade than the Strokes (although I’m sure their accountants would dispute such a claim). Yet 2011 finds the band that christened the previous decade a completely spent force. The Strokes have chosen to “celebrate” 10 years as a band with a flat, mirthless album and a host of interviews wherein the band members take shots at each other and wonder aloud why they continue to make music at all. Meanwhile up north, Sloan is celebrating 20 years of service with the release of The Double Cross, another expected solid album. It’s slightly unfair to fault a band for overachieving, yet Sloan set the bar extremely high in 2006 with their 30-song near-masterpiece Never Hear the End of It. That album marked the moment when the band accepted their small but significant role in history and reignited a fire that never really went out in the first place. They spoiled us, and it was tough to listen to 2008’s similarly spirited Parallel Play without wishing it was about 17 tracks longer. The specter of NHTEOI is likely to haunt The Double Cross as well which, at 33 minutes, is the band’s shortest outing. It’s also the band’s 10th album and there’s an unwritten law that says any band that maintains an unflagging level of consistency over the course of 10 albums is almost beyond criticism. Almost....full text |
| Jbreitling |
| [We welcome back to these digital pages long-time contributor and friend of the blog Jay Kumar. When Mr. Kumar is not doing tons of stuff that basically makes the rest of us look like lazy asses, he hosts the consistently terrific Completely Conspicuous podcast. Subscribe here. -- Ed.] Twenty years is a long time to do anything, let alone do it at a consistently high level. But quality is exactly what relatively unheralded Canadian power pop veterans Sloan has delivered album by album since 1991. Over two decades, the band has endured major label flirtations, serious shifts in musical plate tectonics, low record sales, a brief breakup and constant touring. On its new album The Double Cross (out this week on Yep Roc), Sloan serves up another impeccable collection of songs that could comfortably fit in any of the last four decades. The band has always featured songs written and sung by all four members and The Double Cross is no exception. Album opener "Follow the Leader," penned by bassist Chris Murphy, is an uptempo number that segues into "The Answer Was You," a song from guitarist Jay Ferguson, who writes perfect 1970s AM radio ditties. Guitarist Patrick Pentland contributes catchy riff-rockers, including the standouts "Unkind" and "It's Plain to See." In addition to his powerhouse drumming, Andrew Scott continually contributes interesting slabs of psych-rock to Sloan albums, providing a nice counterpoint to the Beatles and Kiss-influenced offerings of his bandmates. Scott’s "Traces" and "She's Slowin' Down Again" are two more top-notch numbers. The album is full of songs that should be all over the radio, but won’t be....full text |
Sloan lyrics
|
| |||||||||||||
