In Stores Now: The Double Cross by Sloan

Illustration from Anales del Museo Nacionale de Chile, 1982

With The Double Cross, we're three albums into the big Sloan comeback that started with 2006's Never Hear the End of It, and Sloan's not showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, their openly celebrating the fact that they've been together for twenty years (the album title's roman-numeral reference) and now have ten albums under their collective belt. After the 30-song opus of Never Hear the End of It, Sloan has gone back to their typical format, in which each of the band's members contribute two to four songs. With 2008's Parallel Play, this approach felt like a bit of a letdown but, with The Double Cross, they create a very similar record with much better results.

A couple tweaks make all the difference. As its title suggests, Parallel Play was all about the four songwriters who make up Sloan each doing their own thing, but it didn't hang together very well. The Double Cross feels much more collaborative - you can almost hear them suggesting improvements to each other's songs, and the songs flow together as one long suite, extending this feeling of overlapping work. The other thing that The Double Cross has going for it is consistently stronger songwriting. Chris Murphy contributes four tunes this time around, and they're all excellent, particularly the bouncy disco-pop of "Your Daddy Will Do" and the closing ballad "Laying So Low" (one of the least smirky things Murphy has ever written). Jay Ferguson also delivers three solid songs, the highlight being "The Answer Was You" (featuring Ferguson's typical creamy power-pop sound).

On the "rock" side of the Sloan songwriting cadre you have guitarist Patrick Pentland and drummer Andrew Scott. Scott is always a wild card, and his two contributions are slightly out of step with the rest of the band, as usual. "She's Slowing Down Again" is an unremarkable bluesy number, but I really like the laid-back drone-rock of his other composition "Traces" (the album's longest track). Pentland does what he often does, dividing his time equally between punk ("I've Gotta Know"), Stones-y rock ("It's Plain to See"), and muscular power-pop ("Unkind"). "Unkind" is easily my favorite (and probably my favorite on the album) - it has a beautifully simple chorus lyric and hook, and the guitar harmonies give it that '70s pop sheen that few bands go for these days. If Sloan had reversed the release order of Parallel Play and The Double Cross, I'd be tempted to say that we are getting diminishing returns from this band, but instead all I can say is that Sloan can still deliver a solid and fresh-sounding record with a few delightful surprises after two decades.

"Unkind" by Sloan