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Sloan, Parallel Play

by dave heaton

Since 1993 the Canadian pop-rock group Sloan has released 9 studio albums and one double-disc live album, all of which feature photos of the four band members on the cover (I think, if on 1993’s Smeared that’s them, fittingly, blurry). The same four band members, each member getting his share of tracks to write and song. It’s a unique working relationship and an artistic achievement – between the four of them they’ve written a bounty of memorable song, while reveling in rock iconography to an extent that first seemed tongue-in-cheek but was quickly revealed as sincere, devotion to the career they’ve chosen.

Their last album, Never Hear the End of It was so jam-packed with songs that it woke critics up from their slumber so they could lavish the band in deserved praise. I suspect that the few albums before it – 1999’s Between the Bridges, 2001’s Pretty Together and 2003’s Action Pact - flew under the radar, or drew ambivalent reviews, because, lacking the ambition or attention-seeking energy of the first four albums, they seemed workmanlike. In a way they were, but with each passing year each of those albums has only grown in stature, as listeners realize how good so many of those songs were. I liked those albums but wasn’t evangelical about them, yet keep discovering more perfectly crafted pop/rock songs among them.

If it were split into a few albums instead of crammed into one, with some of the songs extended in length, Never Hear the End of It probably would have been given a similar treatment. Same goes for their new album Parallel Play. In feeling it resembles those three more under-the-radar albums. It’s 13 guitar-oriented pop/rock songs. None are drastically different than Sloan songs past. None deviate far from power-pop, alternative-rock, Beatles/Stones/Who, etc., though the last song, “Too Many”, certainly had another life as a reggae song. None contain lyrics that are shocking, surprising, or jaw-droppingly imaginative. It’s, by any measure, another Sloan album. Which is by no means bad news. These are all decent-to-great rock songs, and there honestly aren’t all that many of those around these days. A few songs stand out for me now – the melodic-crunch litany “Burn For It”, the activist/slacker non-anthem “Living the Dream”, the foot-stomping, sort-of soul number “If I Could Change Your Mind”, and the already-mentioned sort-of reggae “Too Many”, with its sentiment, “there’s too many people / fighting wars that can’t be won”. And if history is to be believed, over each of the upcoming years another one of these songs will win me over. And meanwhile Sloan will keep on making albums, keep pushing along with what they do.

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