Music Review: Sloan - Never Hear the End of It
Published February 28, 2007
You can call Sloan a lot of things, but stingy isn't one of 'em. The Canadian foursome's new Yep Roc release, Never Hear the End of It, is a whopping 76-plus minutes of slickly self-produced power-pop: thirty songs in all, even if a few of 'em are more like fifty-second snips than fully fleshed-out verse/verse/chorus/verse exercises.
When every man jack in your quartet is capable of carrying the singer/songwriter flag, I supposed that makes it a tad easier to stuff your disc to the bursting point. Still, the last Sloan disc I know, 2001's Pretty Together, had almost as many bland tracks as rousers, so it clearly isn't that easy.
Six years later, though, you can't accuse this disc of being short on pop ideas: if anything, the plethora of hooks works against the neophyte listener. Listen to a great song like "I Understand," which sounds like something Pezband could've concocted back in the skinny tie era, and before you know it you're three tracks further in, mentally meandering and wondering if you need to check your online bank account. Slap yerself once to pay close attention to the hand-clapper that's now rolling, "Can You Figure It Out?" and, damned if it doesn't turn out to be a fine track, too.
More than once I found myself thinking of Hüsker Dü's 1987 masterwork Warehouse – another brimming collection that initially came across overwhelming but has since lodged every track in my pleasure lobes. (The Dü comparison isn't arbitrary, since the boys themselves name-check that great gone band in their witty Ideal Girl song, "Someone to Be True With.") Sometimes too much of a good thing is just the right amount.
So, if I don't have hold of the whole thing yet, just gimme another six months. Those songs that immediately leapt out at me – "Who Taught You to Live Like That?" (great glammy group chorus on this 'un), the sweet harmonic entreaty "Listen to the Radio," the Who-like moaner "Something's Wrong," the woozily dB's styled "I Know You," or "Fading into Obscurity" – remain such smoochable samples of hard-working pop-rock that I know this disc'll remain in regular rotation for quite a while.
- Music Review: Sloan - Never Hear the End of It
- Published: February 28, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Music: Rock
- Writer: Bill Sherman
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Oh yeah....... great review. I've been plugging this album for months. I caught Sloan live in October last year - I'm sure the first half dozen songs of their set was from this album, a nd you could sing along with everyt choruos the second time it came round. Chris Murphy jumped back to drum on that 50 second sonic rant HFXNSHC as well as a couple of others. And of course they finished with If It Feels Good Do It... which is why they're still making music I assume.
I, too, originally thought of Husker Du as a comparison point, but Zen Arcade more so than Warehouse; lately, though, I'm thinking more Beatles' White Album. And I'm thinking I should've bought the vinyl at the show instead of the CD.