Occasionally I will do a deep dive on a favourite artist's discography and collect my thoughts on a hashtag. I think this is all of them so far? 😁

#FSOLTime - The Future Sound of London
#SloanTime - Sloan
#BjörkTime - Björk
#EnoTime - Brian Eno
#AFXTime - Aphex Twin
#TMBGTime - They Might Be Giants
#HevyDevyTime - Devin Townsend

Good morning my little biggest ones! Last time on Evilchili Listens to A Large Discography and Toots About It, I had a look at the mighty Future Sound of London on #FSOLTime. We've also had some good #SloanTime, #BjörkTime, #EnoTime, and #AFXTime and maybe more I'm forgetting? Time is an illusion and toots doubly so.

Today I'm going to listen to some of my favourite records by They Might Be Giants. Why? Because I like fun. The book is long, friends: 34 albums and 15 EPs across nearly 40 years of recording, and if you're the casual listener who thinks the two Johns stopped being interesting when they put the band together, no! Get ready for a long tall weekend of great music: if you use your phone power to follow me you will surely glean how wonderful these records are. So if you've got the spine, join us on the flood of #TMBGTime!

(Or if you're already tired of me, join the eacape team and bury my murdered remains under a muted hashtag.)

Okay, about that Commonwealth.

After a quarter century of doing the thing, from being the biggest band around to being all but forgotten but with a diehard fanbase, any reasonable band would be forgiven for calling it quits or running out the clock with best ofs, live albums and festival dates and, to borrow a phrase, fading into obscurity. Instead, Sloan's 11th outing is of all things a double album with a side devoted to each member.

The format change really highlights the idiosyncratic songwriting of each one and as a result it plays like a series of EPs; you get a sense of what the band might be with a single lead singer and writer. It's fascinating, and if anything demonstrates why the foursome's magic is alchemical in nature; reviews were somewhat mixed. I suspect you could have sequenced these songs as two records in the traditional 12 song format and they would have reviewed better.

Anyway Jay's side opens the album, and it contains some of his sweetest harmonies and most tender melodies. Three Sisters and You've Got a Lot On Your Mind are both gorgeous, with lush vocal harmonies throughout.

Chris's side is, typically, more rooted in the 60s, all hand claps and tambourines, although there are some surprising and welcome string arrangements softening the sound, as on Carried Away.

And then there's Patrick Pentland's side, which seemed to throw people for a loop. It's not his strongest writing, and there's no radio conquering single here, but if you've been paying attention you'd know his favourite band is Jesus And Mary Chain, and this entire set is heavily inspired by the Creation records sound of the early 90s -- he very kindly confirmed as much when I posed the question. I suspect these are the songs least helped by the sequencing. I love 13 (Under a Bad Sign) though. Sits happily between J&MC and Stone Roses.

Finally, there is Andrew Scott's formidable Forty-Eight Portraits, a single suite of several movements in total nearly 18 minutes long. The obvious comparison would be the back half of Abbey Road, but that's not really fair. It's audacious, and the clearest statement of his yet recorded. The band is firing on all cylinders here, and it mines the back catalog, lifting melodies and even entire verses from older records The whole thing hangs together surprisingly well for something that has dog barks, a children's choir, Velvet Underground beats, bells, chimes, and fuzz pedals.

And that's it for #SloanTime. As you can no doubt tell, they've been my favourite band for more than 30 years. They are, ultimately, a pretty great power pop quartet with a gift for melody and harmony, who wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, sticking close to a formula but willing to play, experiment, and surprise within it. They're probably not going to be your favourite band, and that's okay. But there are incredible songs here for you to discover.

I will leave you with You've Got A Lot On Your Mind, live on #KEXP.

https://youtu.be/awN-VQVhX2M

I'm going to jump ahead now to Sloan's eighth record, the sprawling 76 minute masterpiece Never Hear The End Of it. I could do a whole #SloanTime thread just on this record, which is 30 tracks stitched together into a single unbroken suite, many of them under 2 minutes.

I remember Patrick Pentland talking about songwriting on hellbird a few years back; he loves short songs -- say what you're gonna say, say it, and GTFO. This is very much on display here.

The record functions as a sort of thesis statement for the band, taking everything that we'd come to expect and refresh it, restate it. The songwriting is invigorated and brimming with infectious energy: Who Taught You To Live Like That?, I've Gotta Try, and Ill-Placed Trust are power pop classics; I Can't Sleep and Something's Wrong are bursts of 60s psych garage; and HFXNSHC asserts their east coast hardcore roots. It's all stuff Sloan has done before, but there's an energy and a verve here that is infectious, and with the short runtimes and careful sequencing nothing overstays its welcome.

There are many standouts here and not a single dud, which for a record this long and ambitious is really impressive. But my favourite track and one of the band's best is Fading Into Obscurity. NHTEOI was released in 2006, nearly a decade since they topped the charts with Money City Maniacs, and although their records continued to be well reviewed and the fanbase was solidified, it was clear Sloan was never going to take over the world. So here, Chris Murphy gives us these lines:

I made a name for myself
When one could do such a thing
A reputation that's held
Together by string
And so I chose to cherish those
Who think there's some purity
To fading into obscurity

But rather than either wallowing or lashing out, Fading... is glorious abandonment, a four minute, four movement piece that begins in this heavy place and ends in ambivalence, but with a healthy dose of "fuck it, let's just play" right down the middle.

https://sloanmusic.bandcamp.com/album/never-hear-the-end-of-it?t=6

My next #SloanTime pick is 1998's Navy Blues. This record came at the height of the band's popularity and is absolutely stuffed full of bangers - Iggy and Angus and She Says What She Means are stadium rock monsters. But it was the Pentland/Murphy collab Money City Maniacs that broke the top ten and was everywhere. It's Sloan all wrapped up in a perfect power pop anthem -- J&MC guitar solo, four part vocal harmonies, audience chant-ready break down, Andrew Scott channeling Keith Moon, hand claps, Murphy yelling "woooo!" ...

Navy Blues is mostly confused with that one single tho (I remember one absolute poltroon of a reviewer dismissing it as "Camaro rock"), but sonically there's a lot more going on. There's a ton of 60s pop on this record. Suppose They Close The Door features Pentland's guitar at his most Lennonesque and Murphy's bass at his most McCartneyesque; it even apes Strawberry Fields' obvious tape edit.

Overall Navy Blues is louder, looser, and gnarlier than One Chord To Another, but like all Sloan records it's hard to pin down. I Wanna Thank You rollicks along on a harpsichord / strings vamp ferchrissakes. And those vocal harmonies in the outro! Sloan rarely get credit for how great they are on the mic, but having seen the live several times I can attest they *nail* those four part harmonies. And the album closes with I'm Not Through With You Yet, an acoustic, sitting-round-the-piano minor key vamp that ends on a picadilly third; a brilliant resolution to a song that is itself a brilliant resolution of the record.

https://sloanmusic.bandcamp.com/album/navy-blues?t=10

If I was doing #SloanTime properly I would do One Chord To Another next, because it is PERFECT, and my favourite record by my favourite band. But I just listened to it last week! 😃 So I'll just say it is *required* listening and if you listen to nothing else on this tag, give it a spin.

https://sloanmusic.bandcamp.com/album/one-chord-to-another

#SloanTime! As a good Canadian boy there were certain things I was required to love growing up: Hockey. Camping. Rush. Beer.

I hated all of it. Yes even Rush., and yes I can still sing all of Tom Sawyer etc don't @ me bro.

I didn't even like the Tragically Hip or 54-40 or Alanis Morrissette or Bryan Adams or Bare Naked Ladies or any of the other big domestic bands of the 90s. But thanks to federal broadcast regulations that required radio and television to air at least 30% original Canadian content, plenty of bands would get a shot at the popular consciousness that wouldn't otherwise, so between MuchMusic (think MTV), Toronto's alternative radio station CFNY (about which is Rush's Spirit of Radio composed see I know this shit don't @ me bro) and working at my uncle's record store I was exposed to a lot of local music that wasn't charting. I don't remember the first time I heard Sloan, but it was probably Marcus Said, from the Peppermint EP, on CFNY.

The Peppermint EP was a 1992 indie release on the band's own Murderecords. It is heavily influenced by the sounds of the day -- lots of Sonic Youth and Nirvana and Jesus and Mary Chain -- but three of the tunes would end up on their debut full length, Smeared, and was enough to secure an ill-fated deal with Geffen. One of those songs, Underwhelmed, they rerecorded for the LP and it became a bona fide smash hit. It was later voted the second-greatest Canadian rock song of all time (behind The Guess Who's American Woman).

Anyway Sloan quickly became a permanent fixture on radio and chart topping stars on the back of hit single after hit single. Everyone knew Sloan. But Peppermint holds a special place in my heart because it felt like a secret that only I knew -- I was literally a Sloan hipster.

#np

https://sloanmusic.bandcamp.com/album/peppermint?t=1