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The Good in Everyone

With power pop fans, I've often found this kind of grouping. If you like Teenage Fanclub, you also like the Posies, along with Matthew Sweet, Jellyfish, and Fountains of Wayne, to name a few. Another one is Sloan, a band that, for some reason, has only now clicked completely in for me.

Other than the enjoyment of One Chord to Another's "The Good in Everyone" and Never Hear the End of It's "Right of Wrong," I had yet to find the band's material worth checking out. Something rubbed me the wrong way when I listened to the A Sides Win singles compilation, and felt unmoved by my first listen to Never Hear the End of It. I thought I was supposed to like these guys since I liked all of their sonic power pop brethren. Where was the disconnect?

I'm still not sure, but a light came on in my head right before I headed over to Ryan's place yesterday. I believed he had all of the band's material in his iTunes, so I loaded up on blank CD-Rs. When I left, I had copies of Smeared, Twice Removed, One Chord to Another (coupled with the Recorded Live at a Sloan Party bonus album), Between the Bridges, Navy Blues, Action Pact, and the 4 Nights at the Palais Royale double-disc live album. And I still have a few more to listen to. But I want it all because Sloan is that good and that prolific.

Maybe I should thank Noel for the mention of the band in last week's Popless. Maybe I should thank the screensaver program on Ryan's computer that shows album covers from iTunes, and constantly seeing various Sloan covers come up. I don't know, but it's like forces converged and moved me to jump in the deep end. Now that I have plenty of material to wade through and an appetite for their material, this stuff is sinking in very well.

Comments

Rj said…
"Something rubbed me the wrong way when I listened to the A Sides Win singles compilation, and felt unmoved by my first listen to Never Hear the End of It."

I believe you mean you were underwhelmed, if that's a word.
12:22 AM
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