by Michael Hamad
Most rock bands, even ones who claim to be democratic, have one, maybe two members who do most of the band-fronting and songwriting.
Canadian rock quartet Sloan makes consistently great records that equally represent each guy, more or less, and they've done so from around the time they started releasing albums in the early '90s. Sloan isn't paying lip service to the idea of democracy; every album has at least one song written and sung by Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland and Andrew Scott (listed here in alphabetical order). They all sing. They switch instruments.
This is not news. Writers who've covered Sloan over the years often lead with the band's democratic arrangement and enviable longevity. The band knows it.
"At this point in our music-making," Murphy, who usually plays bass or drums, said, "when we go to make a record, we ask ourselves: 'What is the hook of the album?' If you want to get written about, what do you do? We don't have that sexy a story. We have a moderate success. None of us have dated celebrities. No one is in rehab. We're not a very sexy story. The story for the past 10 years, if anybody has written anything about us, it's usually, 'How do they do it? I can't believe they're still together.'"
Another thing writers often point out: Sloan can sound like the Beatles, or Big Star, or any of the better power-pop acts with roots in the '60s or '70s. They're all, consistently, pretty great. "For better or worse, I think of my songs as being interchangeably appropriate for any record that we've done since our second record," Murphy said. "Our first record was very of-the-times: 1991, 1992. Everything from then on, we strived to make essentially timeless."
There have been other hooks in recent years. Sloan's last album, "The Double Cross," celebrated their twentieth (XX) anniversary; before that, in 2006, they released "Never Hear the End of It," with a whopping 30 songs. Sloan's latest release, the double-wide "Commonwealth," released this past September, gives a full album side to each band member, to do with as they will. "We just thought it would be a fun thing, and if any band could do it, we have positioned ourselves to be that band," Murphy said. "The number of bands that could really pull off a record where everyone is given an equal platform is small. Not that the whole world is listening, but those who are listening are prepared for this kind of thing from us… It's the culmination of us taking great pains to invest in each of us as songwriters, a celebration of the fact that we can do it. It's sort of a show-off move."
Ferguson, usually a guitarist, turned his side into a song cycle, with segues and connective tissue: the melody of "You Got a Lot on Your Mind," the second song, returns during "Cleopatra," his fourth song. The first of Murphy's three songs fit well together; arguably, so does the fourth, but not the fifth. Guitarist Pentland's statement is one of non-compliance: he doesn't connect the dots, but rather turns in characteristically strong individual songs. Scott, a virtuoso drummer and an excellent guitar player, created an 18-minute suite out of short fragments, with no individual markings along the way. On vinyl, "Commonwealth" doesn't have a Side One, Side Two, and so on, and digitally, they're arranged by alphabetical order by writer. Everyone gets paid equally. The sides aren't available for individual purchase. "We thought that might be our undoing," Murphy said.
Sloan arrives in Connecticut — possibly for the first time ever — on Nov. 10, when they play the Ballroom at the Outer Space in Hamden. Touring, Murphy said, happens every 18 months or so, for a few weeks at a time. "It's not like Metallica, where we're like, 'Where are we, Istanbul?' We're either in the Northeastern states, four cities in the Western States or Canada. That's basically our world at this point. We could go abroad and play nice shows in, like, Sydney, Australia or Tokyo, but it doesn't make financial sense for us." The band makes most of its money playing shows in Canada. Their profile is higher at home than here, but still fairly modest.
"Sometimes I hear people talk about us like we're massive stars in Canada, which is not true," Murphy said. "But we have been on T.V. or on the radio, so we have a band that people have heard of. We enjoy bigger shows up here and also more moneymaking opportunities... We're a band that has been on the radio for the past 20 years. But in the states: I always joke that as we travel south and our powers diminish, we're more and more of a credibility band, so if you know about us, you'll fight for us."
--taken from: Hartford Courant
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