It’s official. No longer will I be able to assume that good old-fashioned “Rock 'n' Roll” is dead and gone; instead, I’ll have to open my eyes to the possibility that it merely hid underground for a while only to rear its head up in Nova Scotia, managing to sprout up and cast off a righteous seedling named Sloan.
Sloan’s new album, entitled Never Hear The End Of It, is definitive proof.
Comprised of 30 — yes, 30 — tracks, this album is quite simply one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. In fact, there is only one complaint that I can find myself coming up with in regards to the album - and that is that it is too short.
Clocking in at anywhere from fifty-two seconds to five minutes and twenty-eight seconds, the songs are, amazingly enough, all beautiful and interesting as hell. There isn’t a single song that I forward past.
Granted, when a song has a playing length of only fifty-two seconds, you might not have much time to process it in order to reject it and get up to change the… see! The song is already over by the time all of that passes. Luckily that particular song in question, “I can’t sleep,” is fast paced and one of the highlights on the record.
You heard me; at under a minute in length it still manages to outshine other tracks.
Sitting there and reading this, you might wonder how an album can ever hope to “work” if it is composed of so many pieces that seem to flow endlessly by your eardrums. Well, you have a valid concern, really.
When I first looked at the amount of tracks on the album I had no idea how Sloan could pull it off. The last band I trusted to have that kind of endurance and speed were the Ramones. But, work it does. “Never Hear The End of It” manages to sound both unified and gloriously jumbled.
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Article comments
1 - Vern Halen
I mentioned this album in a comment in a thread last week - it's one of the best albums of the year, and maybe the best album of Sloan's career. I saw them a couple of months ago, and they opened with about 4 or 5 cuts off this album - brand new, never before heard, and instantly singable by the second chorus.
I like your comparison to Abbey Road - I personally thought of Husker Du's Zen Arcade, not for the sound, but for the scope. There's lots of ground to cover here.
This is possibly better even than One Chord to Another, Sloans's other great album, which I think is the best album the Revolver-era Beatles never made.
Yeah, go out and buy all of their albums - you'll have a great catalog to work through in the new year!
2 - Connie Phillips
Congrats! This article has been forwarded to the Advance.net websites.
3 - Sydney
Ya I just bought this album myself. I agree, it's awsome and one of the best of their career.
I think the critics are guilty of curbing the success of this band. They always complain that the band sounds stuck in a classic-rock feel... that there is no edge to the band. This type of criticism ignores that fact that the songs are catchy as hell. So what if it's not a new sound. It's a sweet sound, and that's all I want from one of the best pop-rock bands around.