This week we examine forthcoming and recent releases from a trio of bands that couldn't be more different. However, luckily for us, the results of each group's efforts result in a trio of excellent albums that won us over.
Usually when a band releases an album evenly split between the members each taking solo sides, the results can leave fans shuddering. Is the band breaking up? Fulfilling contractual obligations? In a best case scenario, even if it's based in mindset of truly creative exploration it often at the very least exposes the weaker songwriters in a band (sides 3 and 4 of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, anyone?).
Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and Sloan is one of those few bands with four amazing songwriters who more than hold their own against each other on every album they've released. Commonwealth is a little different since it groups each contributor's songs together as solo efforts, which end up making this feel like a collection of mini (and one long) suites instead of a more cohesive and unified artistic statement. The album's four sides stick with each songwriter's strengths—Jay Ferguson's still the one with the tender tough, Chris Murphy takes the mid '70s AOR approach, Patrick Pentland hews to the harder rocking power-popper mold and Andrew Scott is still the most experimentally minded while still delivering the hooks—so Commonwealth doesn't really reveal any new insight into the band.
So what makes this album, the 11th LP of the band's career, remarkable is the fact that it sounds just as strong as any other Sloan album despite it basically being four solo EPs wrapped into a single package. It's still one of the best rock albums we've heard this year. Hopefully this is a brief sojourn for the four men of Sloan to create independently before ushering in the next chapter of their astoundingly long and consistently fruitful career.
--taken from: Chicagoist
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