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(L-R : Chris Murphy,
Andrew Scott, Patrick Pentland, Jay Ferguson)
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L and A. Two letters, emblematic of the city's
two different psyches: paradise found, innocence
lost. It's the city of angels, but a breeding
ground for the devil's music. It's home to Disneyland
and the porn industry, the place that spawned
both The Beach Boys and Charles Manson. It was
a strange karmic coincidence that Sloan found
themselves recording their seventh album there:
like L.A., Sloan are the sum of their own dualities.
Four distinct songwriting voices -- guitarists
Patrick Pentland and Jay Ferguson, bassist Chris
Murphy and drummer Andrew Scot -- that nonetheless
form a cohesive collective. Long-time Toronto
scenesters who will always call Halifax home.
Muchmusic and rock-radio regulars who -- via their
own murderecords lable -- maintain strong ties
to their indie roots. Money-city maniacs who have
a soft spot for sweet sugar tunes. Music vets
who, instead of coasting on their cred, continue
to challenge themselves with each record.
For 2001's Pretty Together, the challenge was
for all four members to make demos on home-computer
software and then reconfigure the elements in a group
setting. The results stretched the Sloan sound to unforeseen
arenas, offsetting rally-rousing rockers like the MuchMusic
staple "If It Feels Good Do It" with atmospheric,
lyrically bald confessionals (the hit second single
"The Other Man"), brass-inflected exotic pop
("Your Dreams Have Come True"), emotionally
stark ballads ("Are you Giving Me Back Your Love?")
or loud, stormy psychedelia ("Never Seeing the
Ground for the Sky"). As Ferguson quips, "It
was hardly an album of "Underwhelmeds."
Sloan's new album, Action Pact, is very much
a Sloan record -- in that it sounds nothing like its
predecessor. You've heard Pretty Together -- Action
Pact is Totally Together, a record that reins in the
open-ended experimentation of past albums into a tightly
wound, fiercely focused, breathlessly relentless set
of riff-o-ramic rock 'n' roll wherein the band's inner
Paul Stanley and Paul McCartney come together in perfect
harmony. But like all divided souls, Sloan knew they
needed a good shrink to shake up and sort out their
collective conscience, someone who, unlike Sloan producer
Brenndan McGuire, was not a close friend and could therefore
offer the most blunt, honest opinions. And in doing
so, they realized they'd have to sacrifice their inter-band
democracy for a third-party autocracy.
"The first goal was: let's get a producer,"
says Ferguson, "basically a referee who we could
give full rein to pick the songs. We've had so much
autonomy for so long, it was almost a relief to go 'Yeah,
go ahead!' It just made things less tense, because someone
else is always deciding."
Says Murphy, "With four of us writing, you only
get three songs per record at the most. It sort of made
you lazy -- 'Well, I've already written five, how many
more do I have to write?' This time, we wanted to take
the best songs and leave the choosing up to someone
else. There was almost a competition."
After considering suggested collaborators - a list that
included Ric Ocasek, Fountains of Wayne/Ivy mainman
Adam Schlesinger and Primal Scream/Paul Weller producer
Brendan Lynch - Sloan found their man: producer Tom
Rothrock.
"He's a big AC/DC fan," Pentland says, "but
he's also produced Badly Drawn Boy and Elliott Smith.
If we have a duality about us, it's we're either too
pop or way too hard rock. I thought Tom could address
both sides of us. He's not afraid of loud guitars, and
I always want to make a record that people will play
at a party."
And nothing says party like Rothrock's homebase of L.A.
- especially given the fact Sloan were set to record
just as Toronto was hit with its worst winter in years.
Armed with a slew of songs written at home over the
course of 2002 - and hashed out with Rothrock at a Toronto
rehearsal session last December - Sloan headed out for
L.A. this past February. However, for Pentland, the
relocation to the coast wasn't just a good excuse to
work on suntans.
"The idea was to get out of town," he says.
"When you're recording, you have to be happy, you
have to be in a good state of mind to work hard. It
was like, 'Let's go to where it's sunny, let's change
our whole disposition, let's hang out in the sun.' You
don't go to L.A. to just make a record, because you
can make a record in your basement. You go to let that
environment influence the record and your mindset. And
L.A. is definitely a very rock town."
Once Sloan settled into Rothrock's studio, it was no-bullshit,
all business -- Action Pact was finished in a
mere seven weeks. "Pretty Together took
a long time to make," Pentland says, "and
part of that was just people showing up for 20 minutes
doing one little part and then leaving and then coming
back two days later. Nobody was going to tell anybody
what to do, because everybody was scared to tell each
other what to do. We had to get somebody in like Tom,
who we weren't afraid of, but who we would respect."
"It's funny," Ferguson muses. "Tom Rothrock
is known for producing Elliott Smith, Richard Thompson
and Badly Drawn Boy - these really ornate pop records.
But when we get to his studio, he's going on about Ratt
and AC/DC - he doesn't know anything about The Smiths!
He's a total metalhead. When we recorded in the room,
he'd be in there cheerleading - he wasn't sitting behind
the desk. It was so relaxing, and it felt like we were
all together in the same boat, because we're so used
to writing and recording on our own."
"We all played in our basic configuration: Patrick
and Jay on guitars, Andrew on drums, me on bass,"
says Murphy. "We went down there, practiced for
a couple of days and we banged off the bed tracks live
in three days. We all played live off the floor."
The resultant record speaks to the wham-bam-fuck-you-man
approach : 12 songs in 39 minutes that are so incessant
in their ass-kicking, you barely notice one important
little anomaly - Action Pact is the first Sloan
record without any writing or singing contributions
from Andrew Scott. But fans shouldn't fret that Scott
got the shaft from Rothrock's song selection; Scott
simply had his hands full with a new baby daughter Stirling
(born in March 2002), and was more preoccupied with
changing diapers than writing songs (and wisely refrained
from writing songs about changing diapers).
"We were trying to not be as precious about our
previous conception of what Sloan was all about,"
Pentland observes. "It used to be about four guys
equally represented, but this time, it wasn't so much
about expressing yourself as trying to put together
a fun rock record."
And besides, Scott speaks loud enough on the skins -
check out the first tune, "Gimme That," which
swiftly barges its way into the pantheon of classic
Sloan opening salvos, and packs no less than three killer
hooks into its first minute. Action Pact just
keeps building momentum from there, through street-rockin'
strutters like "Backstabbin" and "Ready
for You" to the spiky post-punk love song "False
Alarm" to the urgent rush of "I Was Wrong."
But, despite Pentland's quest for the perfect party
record, Action Pact concludes with two of Sloan's
most intense, dramatic performances to date: "Reach
Out" rides its swirling, locomotive rhythm into
an explosive Scott-powered climax, while the foreboding
"Fade Away" boys out in a spectacular crescendo
of ringing guitar leads and sad synth undertones that
bring to mind Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane"
(though Pentland insists they were going for more of
a Bowie/"Ashes to Ashes" vibe). "Everybody
seems content to fade away," goes the chorus -
a statement of defiance in the face of a disposable
culture, and a telling indicator that beneath Action
Pact's surface swagger lies a sobering emotional
core.
"The funny thing is the album is upbeat in
a way, but a lot of the lyrics are downer lyrics,"
Ferguson says. "I thought it was a real summer
record at first but then I listened to the lyrics.
It's the compendium to L.A.: upbeat, but underneath
it, there's a darkness."
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