by Alex Baca
Sloooooooooooan! The Toronto-via-Halifax indie rockers have been kicking it for more than 20 years now, steadily releasing albums and touring as if they put out 1992’s Peppermint EP yesterday. Tonight, the band plans to play the entirety of its second album, Twice Removed, which it’s recently reissued as a three-LP deluxe edition.
When Twice Removed came out in 1994, Sloan’s label, Geffen, didn’t aggressively promote it like it did with the better-selling, feedback-swirled grunge that was the order of the day; after the record’s release, Geffen dropped the band. But Twice Removed has confidently taken up residence in the Canadian pop canon: In polls in 1996 and 2005, readers of Chart magazine voted it the best Canadian album of all time. (It slipped to No. 2 in 2000, behind Joni Mitchell’s Blue.)
Sloan’s sweet harmonies, well-placed handclaps, slick and singable choruses, and super-simple lyrics (Robert Christgau once wrote that Sloan’s “popward shift doesn’t change their specific gravity because they’re all surface either way”) come across better today than they did in the mid-’90s, and should fill up Black Cat’s Backstage in short order.
--taken from: Washington City Paper
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