At this point in the lifespan of Sloan, a new studio album is not really about reaching out to new audiences. It’s much more about sustaining creative consistency and keeping the Canadian power-pop institution’s adherents attached.
This is no mean feat, with well over three decades on the group clock. By now, many lesser outfits might have either given up on new material altogether or succumbed to delivering diminishing returns, in favour of repackaging former glories and repumping out the ‘hits’ in the live arena.
Whilst there has been a regular stream of self-curated archival releases across the last decade or so and the foursome do indeed lean heavily upon vintage cuts for setlists on latter-day homeland-only tours, the appearance of a new songs collection every three to four years nevertheless feels worthwhile.
Consequently then — following on from the preceding triumvirate of 2014’s underrated elaborate Commonwealth, 2018’s richly rounded 12 and 2022’s trim solid Steady — the arrival of Based On The Best Seller comes with plenty of warm anticipation attached, particularly for the previously persuaded who are still keen to check in on four distinctive singing and songwriting personalities. Continuing then, it seems, to eschew recording in the same room together in an all-at-once session, with a long-running preference for piecemeal assemblage in varying band combinations and with the input of auxiliary member Gregory Macdonald (backing vocals and keyboards), this twelve-song suite is a convivial renewal of a capacity to channel competing and complementing qualities into a cohesively bonded end product. Whilst this doesn’t mean that Based On The Best Seller reaches the historic peaks of say 1996’s One Chord To Another or 1999’s Between The Bridges, it’s certainly far from being Sloan’s answer to Dirty Work or Knocked Out Loaded.What most fans will ultimately what to know though is, what has their respective favourite Sloan added to the menu this time around? For those of us who have always gravitating towards the Jay Ferguson-led cuts first, although his pieces here don’t soar quite so highly as they did on the aforementioned trio of prequels, they definitely don’t disappoint. This means the most amiable Sloan adding to his choice canon-within-a-canon by serving up Sticky Fingers-alike chugging and twinning with creamy harmony coatings on “Capital Cooler”; jangling Split Enz-edged swooning across “Congratulations”; and gorgeous George Harrison-tinged twanging and sliding through “Collect Yourself”.
The more openly riffage-loving Patrick Pentland proffers a less immediately appealing selection, in contrast to Ferguson’s near-faultlessness. Yet his knack for embedding deep hooks remains, as he steers through hard-glam boogieing (“Dream Destroyer”), somewhat unwieldly post-grunge stomping (“So Far Down”) and rousing Lindsey Buckingham-gone-heavy folk-rock (“Here We Go Again”). Elsewhere, the most enigmatic and least prolific Sloan rider, Andrew Scott, carries on his expansive psych-rock explorations from Steady. This means delivering a pair of fleeting but arresting contributions, in the shape of the frazzled tech-surrealist sprawl of “Baxter” and the murkily sinuous agit-propped “No Damn Fears”. Affording Based On The Best Seller its overall core strength and sense of balance is the ever-agile and affable Chris Murphy, who seamlessly switches between unashamedly jaunty Kinks-infused musical hall communalism (“Open Your Umbrellas”), Sparks-meets-Queen ‘70s grandeur (“Live Forever”), “Penny Lane”-meets-Pet Sounds uplift (“Fortune Teller”) and warmly chiming Californian Americana (“I Already Know”).While Based On The Best Seller won’t set the music world alight in the key of Sloan and could have been a tad tighter in places, it certainly keeps the flame dependably alive through its improbably interconnected characterful set-pieces.
-Adrian-
