Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For

my best pal stumpy makes killer comps and mixes. [note: looks like my nagging’ll pay off – he should be starting a blog in late march! woo hoo!] one of his finest efforts is sloan: a decade of power-pop. rawkin’. this canuck quartet has been cranking out kick-ass power pop with crunch for over 10 years now, and damn, they’re good – and if not for stump, I might’ve never heard ‘em. their ’97 single “money city maniacs” is a classic in the tradition of matthew sweet (especially “girlfriend”) and, er, the sweet (especially “blockbuster”). “waiting for slow songs” has got an almost-r.e.m. sweet rickenbacker-jangle to it (and some very johnny marr circa ’85 byrdsian guitar figures as well, in its faux-chorus), and is the kind of record wilco should be making, and might still, were their heads not so far up their asses (and mind you, I like – but don’t love, and don’t get the ridiculous critical hosannas for – yankee hotel foxtrot). musically, it’s sloan’s most delicious cupcake of a record. the best song cheap trick never cut (listen to that guitar solo!) is “losing california.” and “the marquee and the moon” is (I assume intentionally, I mean, c’mon) a knockout tribute-cum-homage to television; the guitar is perfectly stinging à la robert quine. the funny thing is, as much as I’m comparing them to others, or at least using other artists as crib-note touchstones, when I hear sloan, they just sound like sloan to me, not like anyone else. yeah, you can hear influences clearly, but they’ve got their own, albeit regular-joe, identity. since getting dropped by too damned many senseless labels, sloan puts out records on their own murderecords imprint these days, and like so many classic power poppers (the posies, anyone?), they’ll keep going till they quit, or collapse in a sweaty, beer-soaked mess in some dive in alberta or omaha. god bless ‘em.