Premier Rock Forum

I love Sloan because they give me something to listen to during the two months of sunshine I get each year. Personally I would rank the records thusly -

Twice Removed
Between the Bridges
One Chord to Another
Navy Blues
Live at a Sloan Party!
Never Hear the End of It
Smeared
Pretty Together
Action Pact
Parallel Play

Songwriter consistency league table -

Andrew Scott
Jay Ferguson
Chris Murphy
Patrick Pentland

The new one sounds pretty boring, which is a shame.

alex maiolo wrote:Cooked ribs with Gregory, their touring keyboard player, on Sunday night.

I met Gregory briefly outside Southpaw pre-show the last time they came through. He seemed like a nice, funny guy. After my compliments on his performance the prior evening our exchange went something like:

P: "Oh and ask Chris if he'll do 'Ana Lucia' tonight. It's my new favorite."
G: "We didn't do that last night?"
P: "Nope."
G: "Alright. I'll ask him. Who should I say requested it?"
P: "Me."
G: "Who are you?"
P: "I'm me."
G: "Well, I'm me too."
P: "No, you're not. I'm me. You're you. Take care."

They played it and it ruled.

alex maiolo wrote:He's one talented dude, that guy.

He sure is. He works his fucking ass off.

'Ana Lucia' is a tune. Probably the best Murphy song on that album.

Drop all the Pentland crap from that record and it's absolutely superb. Can't believe it didn't get more attention when it was released.

The new one has grown on me already.

Not a bad record at all.

tommydski wrote:'Ana Lucia' is a tune. Probably the best Murphy song on that album.

Drop all the Pentland crap from that record and it's absolutely superb. Can't believe it didn't get more attention when it was released.

Why the Pentland hate tommy.

He's easily my favorite Sloan.

They wouldn't sound nearly as much like Cheap Trick as they do without him.

I like Pentland but he contributed a fair whack of shit to the previous three records. In particular, his songs on NHTEOI were nauseating. 'Radio' is an absolute abomination. There was also a song that sounded like the fucking Offspring, which was especially unfortunate considering he resembles the guitar gimp from that band. I actually cut a couple of his songs off the playlist on my iPod, something I am normally loathe to do. Also, I get the impression that the whole ill-fated Action Pact debacle was a lot to do with Pentland and his songwriting was severely stretched from not having Andrew's songs to fall back on. I think part of the reason NHTEOI was so good was that Pentland was absent for most of the recording and the other three just got on with it.

Still, he wrote some of the seriously great Sloan songs over the years. 'Loosens' and 'Money City Maniacs' are two of my favourites. His songs on the new record are good too. Much better than Murph's.

Our own Alex Maiolo has two great articles about Sloaaaaaan in the latest Tape Op.

Very cool!

tommydski wrote:I like Pentland but he contributed a fair whack of shit to the previous three records. In particular, his songs on NHTEOI were nauseating. 'Radio' is an absolute abomination. There was also a song that sounded like the fucking Offspring, which was especially unfortunate considering he resembles the guitar gimp from that band. I actually cut a couple of his songs off the playlist on my iPod, something I am normally loathe to do. Also, I get the impression that the whole ill-fated Action Pact debacle was a lot to do with Pentland and his songwriting was severely stretched from not having Andrew's songs to fall back on. I think part of the reason NHTEOI was so good was that Pentland was absent for most of the recording and the other three just got on with it.

Still, he wrote some of the seriously great Sloan songs over the years. 'Loosens' and 'Money City Maniacs' are two of my favourites. His songs on the new record are good too. Much better than Murph's.

Just saw your response, must have been away from the internets for awhile when you first posted.

I think I'm in the minority in that I LOVE Action Pact. It's seriously dangerously close to the top of my Sloan list. I've never met another human who would say that. The main reason i love it is the awesome PPentland songs.

Also, NHTEOI's main downfall to me was not enought Pentland songs.

By "the other three just got one with it", don't you mean Murphy wrote 98% of the songs and the other 3 played them. Didn't Ferguson only have like 2 songs on that 30 song record?

Essentially, Jay and Murph hit upon the idea of a really long album while they were recording, mainly because they both had a few shorter songs. Andrew had three or four long songs and wrote a bunch of shorter songs off the cuff in the studio once he heard about the concept. Patrick recorded his own songs more or less seperately and nobody actually told him that there was thirty songs on the album. He found out during mixing. Thus, he 'only' got four songs. JC told a funny story about him begrudging this earlier in the thread but accidentally confused him with Jay.

Comparatively - Murph had 12, Andrew had 9, Jay had 5.

It's funnier when you know that Patrick was honest-to-God wearing the fur coat from this video at the time.