Sloan mix for John:
1. Money City Maniacs
2. 500 Up
3. It's In Your Eyes
4. Can't Face Up (mp3)
5. Coax Me
6. Ana Lucia
7. The Good In Everyone
8. Ill Placed Trust
9. Underwhelmed
10. Iggy & Agus
11. The Lines You Amend
12. Right Or Wrong
13. I Am The Cancer (mp3)
14. Listen To The Radio
15. All By Ourselves
16. The Other Man
17. I Understand (mp3)
18. Nothing Left To Make Me Want To Stay
19. G Turns To D (mp3)
20. I Wanna Thank You (mp3)
21. Another Way I Could Do It
22. The Rest Of My Life
After the last mix I made for John, the 2 bands he expressed an interest in hearing more of and asked me to burn a CD of were Ruth Ruth and Sloan. Since I only have a couple Ruth Ruth CDs that both easily fit on one disc (the Little Death EP and Laughing Gallery), that one was easy, but I had to take some time and put some thought into a Sloan best-of. A-Sides Win: Singles 1992-2005 would've done the trick if they hadn't gone and one-upped themselves with Never Hear The End Of It, my favorite or second-favorite record of their career and #1 album of '07, which raised the impetus for a hand-picked mix.
Sloan is by no means one of my favorite bands, but they've very gradually grown in my esteem over the years, partly because my taste in rock has slowly come around closer and closer to their melodic, antiquated power pop sensibility. Back in the mid-90s, they were just another random DGC alt-rock band I learned about on 120 Minutes, who turned out to be big in their native Canada, and I got a kick out of seeing their videos in daytime Much Music rotation the time I went to Toronto. And even though their output is wildly uneven (without being quite varied or unpredictable enough to be fascinatingly uneven), they've plugged at it long enough to have a pretty thick catalog of good and great songs. The fact that the band is comprised of four singer/songwriters, all of whom have their merits and standout tracks, is a pretty unique and respectable feat and helps keep things fresh -- even the weakest vocalist or tunesmith of the bunch, drummer Andrew Scott, is no Ringo.
As it is, this mix is by no means perfectly balanced, weighted heavily towards singles (half of the tracks also appear on A-Sides Win) and my two favorite albums, Never Hear and One Chord To Another, so while no album entirely gets the shaft, some only get the most obvious pick hits. As it happens, just the other day some news came down the pike that they're releasing a new album, Parallel Play in June, so maybe that one will be good enough that I'll have to revise this best-of sometime anyway. Coming less than 2 years after their inspired last album, I'm hoping it's an indication of a new creative peak for the band, even if 'creativity' isn't really the operative word with such a workmanlike power pop band.
1. Money City Maniacs
2. 500 Up
3. It's In Your Eyes
4. Can't Face Up (mp3)
5. Coax Me
6. Ana Lucia
7. The Good In Everyone
8. Ill Placed Trust
9. Underwhelmed
10. Iggy & Agus
11. The Lines You Amend
12. Right Or Wrong
13. I Am The Cancer (mp3)
14. Listen To The Radio
15. All By Ourselves
16. The Other Man
17. I Understand (mp3)
18. Nothing Left To Make Me Want To Stay
19. G Turns To D (mp3)
20. I Wanna Thank You (mp3)
21. Another Way I Could Do It
22. The Rest Of My Life
After the last mix I made for John, the 2 bands he expressed an interest in hearing more of and asked me to burn a CD of were Ruth Ruth and Sloan. Since I only have a couple Ruth Ruth CDs that both easily fit on one disc (the Little Death EP and Laughing Gallery), that one was easy, but I had to take some time and put some thought into a Sloan best-of. A-Sides Win: Singles 1992-2005 would've done the trick if they hadn't gone and one-upped themselves with Never Hear The End Of It, my favorite or second-favorite record of their career and #1 album of '07, which raised the impetus for a hand-picked mix.
Sloan is by no means one of my favorite bands, but they've very gradually grown in my esteem over the years, partly because my taste in rock has slowly come around closer and closer to their melodic, antiquated power pop sensibility. Back in the mid-90s, they were just another random DGC alt-rock band I learned about on 120 Minutes, who turned out to be big in their native Canada, and I got a kick out of seeing their videos in daytime Much Music rotation the time I went to Toronto. And even though their output is wildly uneven (without being quite varied or unpredictable enough to be fascinatingly uneven), they've plugged at it long enough to have a pretty thick catalog of good and great songs. The fact that the band is comprised of four singer/songwriters, all of whom have their merits and standout tracks, is a pretty unique and respectable feat and helps keep things fresh -- even the weakest vocalist or tunesmith of the bunch, drummer Andrew Scott, is no Ringo.
As it is, this mix is by no means perfectly balanced, weighted heavily towards singles (half of the tracks also appear on A-Sides Win) and my two favorite albums, Never Hear and One Chord To Another, so while no album entirely gets the shaft, some only get the most obvious pick hits. As it happens, just the other day some news came down the pike that they're releasing a new album, Parallel Play in June, so maybe that one will be good enough that I'll have to revise this best-of sometime anyway. Coming less than 2 years after their inspired last album, I'm hoping it's an indication of a new creative peak for the band, even if 'creativity' isn't really the operative word with such a workmanlike power pop band.
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