How do you make room for four gifted songwriters in one band?
The veteran Canadian quartet Sloan has come up with a way on its 11th album: Give each man one-fourth of the album to call his own, and turn him loose.
As each segment unfolds, the listener gets a sense of what makes each contributor tick, as well as a feel for the varied tastes and sensibilities that combine to form the band’s total sound.
Jay Ferguson favors propulsive pop-rock tunes during his portion of the album, out Tuesday, emphasizing melody and vocal harmonies on the standouts “You’ve Got a Lot on Your Mind” and “Cleopatra.”
Chris Murphy adds decidedly Britpop tinges to his five songs. The vibrant, harmony-drenched “Misty’s Beside Herself” resembles a vintage Hollies track, while the driving rocker “You Don’t Need Excuses to Be Good” adds reverbed guitars and a definite “Revolver”-era Beatles vibe.
Patrick Pentland changes gears immediately during his turn, favoring a heavier rock edge colored with fuzzed-out, squalling guitars on “Take It Easy” and “What’s Inside.” He sounds heavy-handed at times compared to his colleagues. The toned-down “Keep Swinging (Downtown)” uses less sonic firepower, but is much more effective.
That leaves Andrew Scott, who finishes off the album with the ambitious “Forty-Eight Portraits,” a nearly 18 minute-long song cycle. It starts slowly with a long instrumental intro, but turns lively and adventurous as the songs and fragments — I counted at least 10 different ones — blend seamlessly into one another.
So “Commonwealth” offers a bit of everything, from conventional, bouncy pop-rock to hard rock and an adventurous pop-production suite, all of it well-crafted and tuneful. But mostly, it shows just how talented the members of Sloan are, and how skillfully they manage to fit their various influences into a unified whole.
--taken from: The Daily Breeze
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