by Allie Volpe
Despite releasing 11 albums over two decades, Sloan's music features a timelessness where you're not really sure what year it came out in. Although their methods have skewed more independent than collaborative, they've managed to keep a good thing going since the early '90s. Though when it came to their latest effort, the four members of the Canadian alt-rock outfit — Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland and Andrew Scott — each decided to do their own thing.
“I don’t think the goal was to be cohesive,” said Patrick Pentland, one-fourth of the multi-instrumentalist, songwriter extraordinaire group playing Boot and Saddle on Sunday, Nov. 16, said of Commonwealth, released on Sept. 9. “I think the goal was to have four people present what they want. It sort of defeats the purpose of doing four separate EPs or records.”
Commonwealth is an impressive double album designed to give each member a moment in the spotlight, each song on the respective member’s portion of the album effortlessly bleeding into one another. The release is essentially a series of four EPs in which each guy has independently written and recorded his quarter of the album, over its 15 songs and 58 minutes (the last track being an impressive near 18 minutes).
Aimed ideally for vinyl with no apparent listening order for each EP, Commonwealth assigns each member of the band a card suit (Ferguson with diamonds, Murphy on hearts, Pentland taking over clubs, and Scott’s spade) and lets the listener decide which way they’d like to tackle the records.
“The initial intention was for it to be listened to as almost four separate releases in that it was supposed to be four solo EPs supposed to be released at the same time,” Pentland continues.
Shorter than KISS’s 1978 release of four solo albums, in which each member essentially recorded a full album, Sloan wrote Commonwealth in essentially the same manor as they always have: each guy penning his own tunes, almost independently records them, save for drums and keyboards, and they get put on an album. Only this time the sequence makes a whole lot of difference — and the amount of airtime, so to speak, each member gets is equal.
However, they’ve never been one to collectively sit down as a group and write an album together. It almost seems like that would be too easy. Individually writing and recording their own respective songs, then deciding which ones would make the cut has been common practice.
“The overall idea was for each member to present what they wanted to present musically at the time,” Pentland said.
Revealing that Sloan “don’t always get along as a band,” there seldom comes a time when other members speak out or “veto” each other’s work when compiling an album, resulting in very little compromising in each individual’s artistic presentation. “Rarely does anyone speak up and say to somebody else ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’” he said. “We usually know individually what’s working and what’s not working.”
And it’s been working for over two decades. Working through rocky times in the past and never considering a personnel change, Sloan has simply existed in the music sphere, emerging in the grunge era and withstanding the digital revolution.
“Any band is just the sum of all of its parts, so if someone’s not happy or weak in their playing, there’s a multitude of reasons where bands’ lineups change,” Pentland explains. “There’s four principal songwriters in Sloan. Because we all sing and produce in the band, we have more invested in the band.”
Coming up in the early 1990s, when a lot was happening musically (the Beastie Boys, R.E.M. and Alice in Chains all put out albums in 1992, when Sloan’s debut Smeared was released), Sloan — the-not-really-punk, too-clean-to-be-grunge, straightforward, melodic rock — was just trying to find their way. “I think that for awhile, especially at the beginning, we were interested in what was going on with our peers and bands who were kind of like us but more successful. We were obviously looking to be as successful as say, Weezer, or something like that.”
But as time went on and the musical landscape shifted, it became less about what the competition was doing and how they can adequately maintain artistic integrity while still earning a paycheck — which comes down to first having their accessible and withstanding tunes listened to. “I wouldn’t say we’re a household name in Canada, but we’re much more known. In the U.S., we’re seen as a niche band or a boutique band,” Pentland notes.
Credit it to the “hipster mentality” of listeners holding a band close simply out of fear of them getting “too cool,” or what Pentland calls the “underdog status.”
“I feel like we’re kind of trapped as that,” he continues. “We’re in our mid-40s and its not like were going to be on posters on teenagers’ walls.”
Though Pentland was quick to follow up with, “We’re comfortable where we are. There are bands as successful or unsuccessful as we are.”
And that seems to be enough, still “selling out” enough to play festivals and make videos, Pentland declares that it’s still their job to make music, art form or not: “Integrity is great, but you don’t have to go crazy with it,” following up with “Don’t be too precious about it, nothing will be cool enough.”
Generally playing larger shows and festivals in their native Canada and appealing to more “general audiences,” claims Pentland, Sloan tours in the U.S. typically have the band coming through smaller venues like Philly’s Boot and Saddle. However, given their large repertoire, they eliminate the need for an opening act.
Breaking down “An Evening with Sloan” into two sets, the first portion of the performance focuses heavily on Commonwealth while, after an intermission, the latter half features singles, and more recently, deeper cuts — all while switching singing duties, playing frontman for his own songs.
However, sometimes transforming recorded versions of the songs into something adaptable in a live condition, can get a little tricky, particularly with Commonwealth’s nearly 18-minute suite “Fourty-Eight Portraits,” which, yes — they’re playing live. “It took us about two weeks to get it proper.”
Beyond 2014, Pentland is excited for what lays ahead. They’ll finish touring, he’ll welcome a new baby to the brood and Sloan will look to prepping a re-release for 2016, the second time they’ve done so after giving 1994’s Twice Removed the same treatment in 2012.
“Who knows what the record industry is going to be like by then?” he wondered. “We’ve seen the industry change many times. We’ve lasted through the whole mp3/Napster thing and now there’s the whole vinyl thing. I think the way people consume music is changing again. The way music is delivered is changing, but people still want to listen to it.”
--taken from: Philly.com
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