Sloan Turns Back The Clock With Charity Show

--taken from: Toronto.com

by Garnet Fraser

If you stayed home last night in a bid to sleep through the longest night of the year, you missed a heck of a party. In a benefit show at the Great Hall, the Canadian '90s survivors Sloan played, in its entirety, their 1996 album One Chord to Another for the assembled throng at the Great Hall. (Bonjay, Ohbijou, and the Rural Alberta Advantage rounded out the impressive bill.)

One Chord is close to a sacred text among some young Canadian rockers; it gets name checked but not often played, as it involves some supplemental instruments Sloan doesn't often travel with. (What's "Everything You've Done Wrong" without those horns?) But on this night the band had backup - not just longtime sideman Gregory "Goose" Macdonald on keyboards but and honest-to-God brass section - and, just as important, a bit of practice. (Sloan records are always catchy, but the ensemble hasn't always been tight onstage.)

So it was that Patrick Pentland, Chris Murphy, Jay Ferugson and Andrew Scott came roaring out of the gate, poised and propulsive, with "The Good in Everyone," delighting the kids, too, and not just the many greybeards in attendance. (I only mean aging hipsters; there weren't many literal greybeards except for Pentland, who's singing and playing better than ever but who know looks like the leader of some obscure radical movement.)

As a live experience the album works great; it's a lean 39 minutes and 12 tracks on disc, with nary an indulgence, and Pentland's songs still rock, Murphy's still funny, Ferguson's songs are still the prettiest things the band's ever done, and Scott delivers welcome change-of-pace arty pieces that let the crowd catch its breath and made the concert feel like more than just ear candy. (Scott is absolutely still one of the best drummers in the land, too, though the Rural Alberta Advantage set made an excellent case for that band's exceptional skin-pounder Paul Banwatt.)

Then came the encore: A couple of non-One Chord songs, a brief battle for the control of the crowd between the event's emcee and organizer Damian Abraham and the equally amusing Murphy, and Abraham joined the band for a cover of Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" (at one point twirling Murphy around his neck onstage). Finally, Feist showed up, reminding us that before her music was a coffee-house institution,
she was a bona fide rocker. She grabbed a guitar and lent even more power to "She Means What She Says," a chugging nugget from One Chord to Another's follow-up album, Navy Blues. Maybe we can hear that one next year ... right, guys?

(Patrick Pentland on creating and now re-creating the album at The Grid.)

--taken from: Toronto.com