Back in those early days of grunge rock, Sloan was Canada's Great White Hope.
Signed to a major American label, the Halifax group's 1994 album Twice Removed was set to galvanize North American audiences with its blend of fizzy power pop from four distinct songwriters. The label thought otherwise and didn't promote the album and the cross-over success never happened.
Now pushing 17 years together as a band, Sloan has built a sturdy career with a handful of almost-huge-but-not-quite hits on Can-rock radio. Currently, the group is touring behind its ninth full-length studio album Parallel Play and will be performing tomorrow night at the Urban Lounge with Will Currie and the Country French.
Patrick Pentland, the one who usually writes the radio-friendly rocker singles such as Money City Maniacs and Losing California, has not been fazed by the band's highs and lows.
"It's a weird existence, but I can't imagine what else I'd want to do," Pentland says as he leaves a dentist appointment where he's discovered he grinds his teeth in his sleep, probably because of stress (the source of which is none of our business). "I don't think we were ever really interested in being famous. If we were frustrated because we haven't become huge in the States, we would have been over a long time ago."
While listening to Parallel Play, it's evident the band has not grown languid on trying to break into the mainstream's consciousness. Rather, the taut collection of 13 songs showcases Pentland, Chris Murphy, Jay Ferguson and Andrew Scott at the top of their trade.
"I like this record," says Pentland, who explains each member records his songs individually. "(We) have to learn the songs afterwards, and because I'm not really involved in playing on anyone else's songs on the record, I always have to learn everything and now sometimes I don't even hear the songs until mixing. So in that way it's neat because I'm part of the project, but I get to hear it as a fan."
This is the way Sloan works and has done so for many years. Pentland explains he recorded the majority of his songs entirely by himself, with the occasional contribution (drums, bass, harmony) from the other three.
The one album the band did attempt to record as a group effort was the fan-maligned stab at commercial radio, 2003's Action Pact.
"I used to stand up and defend Action Pact because it got a lot of flak from fans of our band who wanted us to play keyboards and not rock out," explains Pentland. "Chris and I really wanted to make a rock record that reflected what we sounded like as a live band."
While the band did regain some of its hardcore fans with the incredibly eclectic, 30-track opus Never Hear the End of It, Pentland says the band faces an uphill battle with its most obsessive followers.
"There's two tiers of Sloan fans. I do read the (Sloan) message board and don't really consider them to be real Sloan fans; I consider them to be fans of a certain point in their lives and they want us to be that point again, that soundtrack or something," says Pentland. "I know a few of those message board people and they're all nice people, but I think that message board is set up to complain about us. It's like, 'You go make a f--king record.' I have to be torn away from the computer sometimes, I get really angry."
One topic online fans hammer the group over is the lack of a b-sides and rarities collection. Pentland explains there are so many recordings scattered over a variety of formats, the band doesn't even know where they all are. Besides, he says, "Those are some of those things you save for when the band's over and someone needs to make a mortgage payment."
However, fans will get their fix of Sloan in the near future when one of the band's songs will be used as a theme for an unnamed TV show in Canada, says Pentland.
"We own all the publishing," says Pentland, "so when people come to us and ask if we want to put our song in this movie or commercial, we're like 'sure, fine.' We're pretty whorish with our music."
