Sloan - fave tracks and albums

Now that the new album is out I also realize I have some catching up to do with Sloan back catalog. I'm wondering which one(s) among these Sloan albums I don't own I should get first:

Pretty Together
Action Pact
Parallel Play
Double Cross
Commonwealth

 

Of those 5 -- Commonwealth, and then Parallel Play, IMO. The other 3 are good, but those two are better.

 

My 5 favorite Sloan songs:

Everything You’ve Done Wrong
Money City Maniacs
She Says What She Means
Rest of My Life
The Other Man

 

Huge fan. I've seen them 6 or 7 times across the past 25-ish years.

Navy Blues is my favorite album of theirs by quite a ways. They've yet to release a truly bad album.

I'd say the most underrated/forgotten thing in their catalog is the Hit & Run EP from 2009, which is dynamite.

Here's my top 5 (in alphabetical order) for each bandmate:

Andrew:

• In The Movies
• Love Is All Around
  
• She's Slowing Down Again
• Sinking Ships
• Where Are You Now?

Chris

• Another Way I Could Do It
• Chester The Molester
• Coax Me
• Laying So Low
• Take It Upon Yourself

Jay

• Cheap Champagne
• Fade Away
  
• I Wanna Thank You
• If I Could Change Your Mind
• Snowsuit Sound

Patrick

• I Can Feel It
• I Was Wrong
• Ill-Placed Trust
• Stand By Me, Yeah
• The Good In Everyone

 

This is a very consistent band, but my fave is definitely Never Hear The End Of It, their magnum opus.
Going to see them live next week!

 

I’m still waiting for a 10” of Hit & Run!

Good call with Cheap Champagne. Shows how good a band can be late in their career.

 

Favorite Tracks:
The Lines You Amend
Losing California
The Other Man
Another Way I Could Do It
People Of The Sky

Current Favorite:
All Of The Voices

 

Exactly, next year is the 10-year anniversary, so let's hope it comes out next year.

 

I saw this thread just before I had to travel, so I couldn't jump in until now.

Favorite albums:
Twice Removed
Between the Bridges
Never Hear the End of It
Commonwealth

Favorite tracks? There's a lot, I'll go with two or three for each studio album.

Smeared
Underwhelmed
Marcus Said

Twice Removed
Penpals
People of the Sky
Worried Now

One Chord to Another
The Good in Everyone
G Turns to D

Navy Blues
She Says What She Means
Money City Maniacs

Between the Bridges
Don't You Believe a Word
Sensory Deprivation
Take Good Care of the Poor Boy

Pretty Together
The Great Wall
The Life of a Working Girl

Action Pact
Gimme That
Fade Away

Never Hear the End of It
Ana Lucia
Before the End of the Race
Ill Placed Trust
HFXNHSC

Parallel Play
All I Am Is All You're Not
The Other Side

The Double Cross
Follow the Leader
Beverly Terrace

Commonwealth
Carried Away
You Don't Need Excuses to Be Good
Forty-Eight Portraits

12
All of the Voices
Year Zero

...Plus various B-sides, bonus tracks and EP cuts:
Lucky for Me
Torn
D Is for Driver
Stood Up
It Is Never

Everyone's gonna have their own favorites, check everything out here:
Discography – Sloan

They've got one full-fledged live album, Four Nights at the Palais Royale, and "official bootlegs" of shows in 1993, 1999 and 2002. My favorite of those is Australia 1999, partly because it corresponds with my favorite album of theirs.

 

One Chord To Another was the first I ever heard, and still my favorite. Bought it having never heard the band before after reading a review on it in a magazine back in the 90's.

I picked up Smeared used on LP a long time ago (nice Japanese pressing), but I never listen to it. It's in my "to listen to" pile.

Bought Never Hear the End Of It used on CD, still have it somewhere but never listened to it much.

 

a quick thank you for remembering my little magazine and to say that a third Sloan track appeared on the CD with issue 14, a demo version of "Who Loves Life More?".

love everything they've done, but if pushed i'd pick Twice Removed, Between The Bridges and XX as favourite albums.
too many fave songs to list but two that i don't think have been mentioned yet are the Jay songs "False Alarm" and "Witch's Wand".

 

"One Chord to Another" is my favorite. I like how it sounds, lo-fi but not conspicuously so, not fuzzed-out or distorted so much as just recorded simply, with a great boxy, compressed drum sound. All twelve songs are great, too.

"Between the Bridges" is probably my second favorite, with Sloan settling in on an approach and sound that they'd for the most part stick with for the rest of their albums. Given that most of their discography is after "Between the Bridges", you might think of it as the most characteristically Sloan album, the one that best defines Sloan's "style".

I think "The Double Cross" is their best album of the 21st century. I don't think they do anything unusual on that one in terms of approach or sound (again, I think they've been in a pretty consistent style since "Between the Bridges"), but I think it has especially strong material over its concise running time.

 

It's also worth noting that Sloan's body of non-album tracks is outstanding, and much of it is collected on the "B Sides Win" compilation.

One non-album track that isn't on "B Sides Win" (because it came out after the compilation's release in 2010) is "It's In You, It's In Me", a Patrick Pentland song that was part of a "hardcore" 7" single.

Sloan, "It's In You, It's In Me"

 

As I mentioned in another thread, Sloan is one of the few bands that have never released a bad album. Some are weaker than others (Pretty Together and Parallel Play are at the bottom of my list), but I can find great songs on every single album. I also have the A Sides Win comp that comes with a DVD of videos.

My rank of their albums:
1. One Chord To Another
2. Twice Removed
3. Action Pact
4. Navy Blues
5. Smeared
6. Commonwealth
7. Between The Bridges
8. The Double Cross
9. Never Hear The End Of It
10. Pretty Together
11. Parallel Play
I've only listened to their new album, 12, one time so far, so I can't rank it just yet! But I do like it.

Top 10 songs:
1. "Money City Maniacs"
2. "The Good In Everyone"
3. "The Rest Of My Life"
4. "The Lines You Amend"
5. "Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore"
6. "If It Feels Good Do It"
7. "Underwhelmed"
8. "Everything You've Done Wrong"
9. "Coax Me"
10. "The Other Man"

 

The Canadian version of the DVD also includes live performances of the same 14 songs (up to and including "The Rest of My Life"). The quality varies widely - from pristine television performances to what appear to be fan-shot bootlegs with badly distorted audio, presumably because the camcorder mic couldn't handle the high volume.

 

Wow! Did you make "Comes With A Smile"? What a great mag that was. I still have 7 or 8 copies (with the CDs) and look at them often and listen to the CDs too.

There was a track on Volume 6 of CWAS called "Winter Birds" by Richard Bell. I loved it but have never been able to find out any information on him. Can you tell me anything?

 

thank you again and, yes, guilty as charged.

Richard was a member of The Blue Aeroplanes from 1985-1988 and that's as close as he came to wider recognition i think...
last i knew he was living in Nimbin in NSW, Australia, DJ-ing (radio) and performing locally. Winterbirds was entirely his own work, recorded in his home in London. i was there when he mixed it and it's definitely a favourite of mine from the CWAS days. when the magazine closed we considered a "best of" 2 CD set and i would have included this song, but sadly that plan didn't pan out.

very collaborative musician and engineer. when we were in regular touch in London he was recording a lot of music in an ensemble called "Conference of Birds" but as i recall that was all on self-released CD-Rs, one of which is listed here: Conference Of Birds - Music From The Delfin Lounge .
found a few tracks from the '00s here:
Richard Bell Music
Rich Bell

sorry for the detour from Sloan but as you're the OP i think that's permitted

 

Thanks a lot for the information on Richard Bell and the Soundcloud link. I am really looking forward to listening! I had no idea about the Blue Aeroplanes link. I did quite a few web searches on him but never found anything.

It's a shame that "The Best of CWAS" never came out. There was so much great music on the CDs that "The Best of.." could easily have been a three CD set!

I'm listening to CWAS Volume 5 right now. Brilliant stuff! My only regret is that I don't have the complete set of mags!

 

Saw Sloan live the other night and they were fantastic (I saw them once before back in 1992).

add "Gimme That" (highlight of the concert) & "People Of The Sky"
+ maybe a couple from their new album to my favourite songs post #25

 

I don't know quite where to start, because as others have also stated, I don't think they've ever made a bad album. That being said, I suppose my favorite album of their's from the 90's is One Chord To Another while in the 2000's it's kind of a toss up between Never Hear The End Of It and Double Cross (the latter of which is somewhat a condensed version of the style of the former). I also love Commonwealth, and 12 is solid, too. My least listened to, though, is probably Parallel Play.

The band has also had some solid material on their EP's (such as Hit & Run) and non-album/bonus tracks. One of my particular favorites of those is Patrick's song "Even Though", which was a bonus track from Never Hear The End Of It. Still amazed it didn't make one of their albums proper.

 

Finally picked up the new album. Really solid from start to finish. I think Patrick upped his game this time with a little more diversity to his tracks.

I must say, they produce beautifully arranged and produced tracks especially for an indie band doing everything out of their own studio.

 

To any American friends on this board... take 3 minutes out of your day and check this out, it's Sloan's newest single. Sloan has been a source of consistently great music and is pretty much only known here in Canada.

 

Sensory Deprivation.

Between the Bridges is my favorite, followed by Pretty Together and Never Hear the End of It.

These guys know how to make an album.

 

My favorite Sloan album is usually the current one. I've been following Sloan for around 25 years and have never felt let down by any of their albums.

Overall favorite albums: The Double Cross, Never Hear The End Of It, Navy Blues, Between The Bridges.

Too many favorite songs to list, but generally Jay and Chris always have a few songs each album that really hit the spot for me.

 

Runs is quite rad. Be on the watch from stuff from Patch in the near/or not future!!!