Tonight at the Black Cat....
Sloan
Parallel Play
[Yep Roc; 2008]
Pitchfork Rating: 7.6
Sloan never really fell off, but they've often been taken for granted. You know how it goes with American critics-- make a bunch of classicist pop comparisons, wonder why they aren't as big in the U.S. as they are in Canada, slap three stars on it, move on to something with more cachet and see you in two years. Which leads me to believe that the surprisingly muted reception of 2006's Never Hear the End of It was the result of no one really knowing what to do with it. Clocking in at 30-tracks with a suite-like flow (more like an avalanche), the record didn't reprogram the parameters of Sloan's sound so much as their scope-- this sort of ambition played completely against type, and were it the work of a younger band, there's a good chance, well, you'd never hear the end of it.
Which puts Parallel Play in a strange position of being a follow-up to a breakthrough album that never really broke through. At least that's what one might think judging from its decidedly more restrained 13-track, 37-minute dimensions. But Parallel Play isn't a reaction to the excess of Never Hear the End of It so much as a consolidation of its strengths. As before, each song careens into each other with nary a second in between, which can distract from the real reason this feels so consistent-- Sloan continue to sound more like a band than four distinct songwriters, a set-up which has arguably led to some accusing them of lacking distinction.
Having taken their Beatles fixations to a logical extreme, they find a parallel play in Belle & Sebastian's The Life Pursuit, co-opting glammier beats to service their fussy, handcrafted pop-rock without succumbing to a loosey goosey sexuality that would be a poor fit. Even those accustomed to Sloan's effortlessness will find the first half of Parallel Play almost flawless. There's still little in the way of artifice or innovation, but it's still easy to admire the architecture-- while the hammering shuffle of "Believe in Me" builds to an ecstatic, positive chorus, it careens right into "Cheap Champagne", which reverses course by downplaying the clever minor progression in hooks in favor of the "ba ba's" that start it off. But beyond those two, Sloan never feel the need to come on too strong, as "All I Am Is All You're Not" gets its hands muddy before striking oil on the hook and "Witch's Wand" disguises its subtly dark lyrics about female mind control (or possibly heroin, but I doubt it) behind the head-bopping melodies.
But then again, there's an issue here that's not really Sloan's fault, per se-- as with most bands who traffic in this sort of retro-minded AM fixation, they always have to skirt the temptation of being too academic. No band should get docked points for making things sound too easy, but when they try to stretch out into a more psychedelic format with the uneasy melody of "The Dogs" and wiggly wah-wah on "The Other Side", things drag on quite a bit-- these are songs Kula Shaker could probably write in their sleep.
Which isn't true of the mission statement of "Down in the Basement", a surprisingly personal (and Dylan-aping) retelling of what matters most to Sloan at this point-- staring down their forties, but unfortunately reprised with a cloying, generic lyric on "I'm Not a Kid Anymore". Simultaneously evidencing hope, doubt, and perseverity, it's an endearing mission statement, and with power-pop generally falling into the clutches of edgeless pantywaists like Fountains of Wayne, it's refreshing to hear one of its finest practitioners see it as a cause worth fighting for.
-Ian Cohen, June 12, 2008
MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/sloan
