Sloan preview

Sloan, The Golden Dogs
Double Door, Chicago
Monday, June 23, 2008

Normally, 13 songs on a CD would be considered pretty good bang for the consumer’s buck. When it comes to Sloan (who released Parallel Play on Yep Roc earlier this month), however, a baker’s dozen almost feels like a rip-off.

Their last album, 2006’s Never Hear The End Of It, was 30 songs deep, after all. Though, it’s probably relatively easy for Sloan – cool Canadian indie rockers before acts like Arcade Fire, Metric, Broken Social Scene, and most recently Tokyo Police Club made it cool to be Canadian indie rockers – to come up with a buttload of material given all four members are songwriters. Not songwriters in the sense they sit in a rehearsal room together and one guy cranks out a riff, another hums a melody, and the others come up with some lyrics — all four guys write their own individual songs from start to finish. Of Parallel Play‘s 13 tracks, four are by Patrick Pentland and three a piece were penned by Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, and Andrew Scott. By their own admission, the members hadn’t heard any of the album’s songs besides their own by the time they entered the studio, which explains why from song to song Parallel Play often sounds like an entirely different record, or better put, an entirely different band.

Tourmates Golden Dogs may have a few things in common (labelmates and Toronto dwellers as well) with Sloan, but they have far fewer cooks in the kitchen. Guitarist/vocalist Dave Azzolini writes most (his wife, keyboardist/vocalist Jessica Grassia, also contributes) the group’s music, including nearly all of the pop rockers on Big Little Eye, an album that nearly never was. In November 2006, less than a year before Yep Roc released the band’s second record (the first, Everything In 3 Parts, was actually two EPs combined) the Golden Dogs came within feet of being a tragic-rock-band-tour-crash story when they lost control of their van on a cliff-lined road near Vancouver. Drummer Taylor Knox’s crafty driving saved the day and the lives of Azzolini, Grassia, guitarist Neil Quin, and bassist Stew Heyduk, a Dogs’ lineup who, ironically, made their live debut together that very night.

— Trevor Fisher

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly