Sloan Delivers A ‘Best Seller’

Whether you know it or not, Sloan is one of the best bands of the last 30-odd years.

Full disclosure: I was vaguely aware of this Canadian foursome when they first appeared, which was during the early to mid ‘90s. But somewhere along the way, I lost track of them. They were never as big in the States as they should have been (or as they remain in the Great White North) and it’s not like there wasn’t plenty of other music to listen to.

Cut to 2022. I read a review of the band’s then-new album Steady, which made me want to check it out. So I bought it — and I was blown away. A dozen songs, all in the general vein of Beatlesque pop, yet diverse — each one different from the last. All killer, no filler. This made me wonder what Sloan had been up to during the preceding 25 years or so. I promptly ordered half a dozen albums from their back catalog and began playing catch up.

Sloan is unique in two ways beyond the quality and consistency of their work. The first way is that, in the three decades and change they’ve been together, they have maintained the same lineup; the four guys in the band now are the same four guys who got together in Halifax back in the day. Very rare in rock ‘n’ roll and even more rare for a band that emerged in the ’90s (a decade largely defined by turbulence). The second way Sloan is unique is that all four members write and sing. And while most people probably have a favorite writer, they are all competent and each member has his own style.  

Lead guitarist Patrick Pentland is the rocker of the bunch. In a perfect world, crunchy riff-driven tunes like “Money City Maniacs,” “Scratch the Surface” and “If it Feels Good Do It” would be blasting out of convertibles all over the world. Rhythm guitarist Jay Ferguson excels both at catchy pop songs (“Dream It All Over Again” and “Cheap Champagne” to name just two) and ballads. He’s definitely the romantic in Sloan. Bassist Chris Murphy is probably the most overtly Beatles-influenced band member — and clever wordplay was his forte from the start (check out “Underwhelmed” or “Try To Make It”). And drummer Andrew Scott generally offers midtempo, psychedelic fare that tends to run longer than the other members’ songs. But then again, his track “Emergency 911,” from the band’s Parallel Play album, clocked in at under two minutes!

Sloan has been making consistently good albums for so long that it’s easy to take them for granted. Most of their discs contain a dozen songs (give or take), are fairly democratic in terms of contributions and feature a treasure trove of harmonies and melodies. They have pushed themselves on occasion, however. Never Hear the End Of It, from 2006, contained 30 songs that ran together in an Abbey Road-like suite. Commonwealth, which came out in 2014, featured four distinct sides — one by each band member. But their last few albums have all included a dozen songs. 

If their new album Based on the Best Seller — which arrived Sept. 26th — doesn’t offer anything new, it’s still quintessential Sloan. Twelve songs, heavy on rockers, with each member doing what he does best. Indeed, the opening quartet of “Capitol Cooler,” “Dream Destroyer,” “Open Your Umbrellas” and “Baxter” find Ferguson, Pentland, Murphy and Scott playing to their strengths. If this effort isn’t quite as good as Steady, it’s worth mentioning that Steady was my favorite album of 2022 and would have been nearly impossible to top. Best Seller is still a worthy addition to the Sloan catalog. The band co-produced the album with Ryan Haslett in Toronto.

I recently had the pleasure of catching up with Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy for the Rock and Roll Globe.

Based on the Best Seller is out in stores. Tell me a little about where and when you guys recorded this album.

JAY FERGUSON: We started the record, Gosh… I guess the pandemic was over. I’m confusing it already with our last album, Steady! Chris has a garage behind his house that he kind of renovated to make it more fun for his kids to play ping pong or play music [in]. But it provided a nice space for us to set up and record drums. So we started there. [We were] initially thinking we would record everything there.

We did a lot of drum takes there, and then we did some guitars. But it was done with our live sound engineer who doesn’t live in Toronto — which meant he would have had to keep coming back and forth. I don’t think it would have [happened] very quickly. So we continued tracking with Ryan Haslett, who lives in Toronto [and] has done a number of our records over the last 10, 12 years. 

Is it cool to ask you about a couple of tracks from the new album?

JF: No way, man! (laughs)

(Laughs) Jay, you sing the opening track, “Capitol Cooler.” I was wondering not only what inspired that but on a broader level — I’ve always wondered, with four guys, who gets the first cut?

JF: You can maybe direct this half to Chris. He usually starts out with the running order [and is] probably keeping track of who sings what, how long the songs are and what’ll make a good flow.

CHRIS MURPHY: Well, I like to at least be involved in sequencing. I’m mindful of the politics — you know, I don’t want it to be all of one person’s songs on one side [of the album]. In a 12-song record, if we had three songs each — which we sometimes do but not always — I’d like each person to be represented in each third of the record, as it were. You exist in the first four, you exist in the second four and the last four.

I have four songs on this record and Andrew has two. So I wanted Andrew to [have] one of his songs on each side. You know, we all sing and write. 

I got in trouble last [time]! I had the leadoff track on the last record and the record before — which I shouldn’t have done. But I just thought that “Magical Thinking,” on our last record, was such a great opener. I took a little bit of flak for that. Not from Jay! 

But I wanna be a shuffled deck. Jay hasn’t opened many records. He kind of opened Never Hear the End Of It — but even that, we put a mini-song before [his song]. Is that the only one, Jay, that you’re the opening song?

JF: I think so, unless you count Commonwealth.  

CM: Oh, Commonwealth! You have all of side one. I do count it!

And let me just say of “Capitol Cooler” because Jay can’t say it — I think it’s a great track. It’s fun. It sort of starts with what Andrew would call the “Suzy Q” beat.  

Chris, I wanted to ask you about “Open Your Umbrellas.” [It] seems almost like a lost Paul McCartney track.

CM: I’ll take any Beatles or McCartney comparison. For sure. That song and another song on the record called “Baxter” are kind of resurrected songs from the mid ’90s. They both exist in album three of the deluxe box sets as these demos that we had at the time. Andrew’s was pretty developed [meaning “Baxter”]. But mine — I didn’t have a piano figure or anything. But during the pandemic, I started trying to learn that song on piano. And I thought, “This is worth doing. I’ll write better lyrics for it.” It’s not just chords; it [has] chords, but there’s enough of an interesting part going. Just the piano and bass and drums take up the whole thing.

I actually thought you were gonna say, “The last couple of records have been so rocking. Why did you [include] ‘Open Your Umbrellas?’ It’s such a fruity little song.” (laughter) But [that’s] what I love about Sloan. Patrick’s “Dream Destroyer” glam stomp careens into [it]. You know, more than the song itself, I think I like the transition.

In terms of piano — my next question is, was that you playing piano? Because I always see the name Gregory MacDonald on your [albums]? I’ve noticed he plays piano and other instruments. We don’t hear about Gregory but he seems to be a vital part of Sloan in his own way. I wanted to ask the both of you [to] tell us a little about him. 

CM: Gregory has been with us for like 19 years. You know, how long did Billy Preston get to be with The Beatles? We brought Gregory in to have us all on best behaviour and within a year, we were all yelling at each other again. But Gregory is a great asset. He allows us to be musically ambitious live — and on record too. 

I did play the piano on “Open Your Umbrellas.” I [also] played piano on “Human Nature” on the last record. [But] when we played it live, Gregory played the piano. He can play anything that Jay and I come up with. He remains the sort of musical director, the Chuck Leavell as it were [of Sloan]. So we’ve remained the four since ’91. But we’ve had a fifth utility guy since 2006 or 2007. You’re right to ask about him.  

JF: Gregory [is] like a musical Swiss army knife. He makes it easier for us to translate the more ambitious songs on our records to the live forum. In the past, Andrew or Chris or I would have to play the piano or the Fender Rhodes. I like that as well. But I think adding Gregory sort of makes everything more musical. On record, I think the main difference is he’s not a writing member of Sloan. The four of us are the songwriters. And Gregory is kind of like the Billy Preston, as Chris said.  

I remember back to “Three Sisters,” from our Commonwealth record, which is a song of mine. There’s a lot of chords and it’s very dense. And I think if I played it, it would have taken four hours (laughter). It was so challenging. Gregory is just more even-keeled in his piano playing, so it was great to have him be able to play that on the record. 

VIDEO: Sloan “Dream Destroyer”

You said the four of you guys have been playing together since ’91. This is well over 30 years — and it’s still the same four of you, which is almost unheard of in rock ‘n’ roll. I’m curious [to know] what you attribute that longevity to?

CM: I mean, the standard answers are you split the money, you make the band a chance for everyone to contribute creatively, you share space in the set list and on the records. And the other thing that I guess I’m realizing over time is unique: We’re not a democracy where three of us might vote on something and then someone would be outvoted. You know, everybody’s allowed to bring 25 percent of the material. By 25 percent, I mean three songs on a 12-song record. If you only have two, you’re not punished for it except for that you don’t have a third song. You make the same amount of money no matter what. I always write at least one insurance song, in case someone doesn’t have a third song. And that has been the case on the last two records.

But also, just romantically — I love The Beatles so much or I loved KISS so much. They’re flip sides of the same problem. With The Beatles, they broke up and then they did the solo acts. And I like them — but I like The Beatles [as a group]. I like the family, I like the story. And with KISS, what they did was they were the four guys. They went to great lengths to explain who they [each] were. But then they started replacing guys — and I definitely lost interest when that started happening. So as a romantic, I just know as soon as you replace someone — I’m not interested anymore and I”m in the band!

Chris, could I ask you about the [older] song “Try To Make It?” [It’s] not only catchy but has some hilarious lines.

CM: Basically, my bullseye is songwriting is things that are at once funny and scathing. “Try To Make It” — it’s kind of a rarity. But it’s about the idea of being invited to things and basically wishing you weren’t invited. “If I’m not acting excited that I was invited, it’s because I’m kinda not.” That’s a funny line.

It is! And the older I get, the more I relate to [it]. 

CM: But it has another thing that I always do. At the end, it’s flipped: you’re trying to get someone to come out and be with you. I don’t know. I’m willing to sacrifice catchiness for a song with a funny twist.

So for [our] final couple of minutes, I’ll ask you guys a corny question: Tell me what The Beatles mean to you. I love The Beatles. I love them together and separately. What do they mean to the guys in Sloan? 

JF: When I was a kid, I liked a lot of music. [But] when John Lennon died, that was actually my real introduction to The Beatles. It was Beatles 24/7; I think it’s probably a shared story. In the summer of 1981, I went to a Beatles fest at a used record store in Halifax, Nova Scotia — and I loved it. I was immersed in Beatles stuff. And I eventually started working at that store three months later.

The Beatles didn’t inspire me to be a musician specifically. But [they] were really the thing that led me to a path of loving music; it was the genesis of what happened to me. I have The Beatles to thank for that. Not only just musically, but the traumatic thing that happened to John Lennon.  

So that’s my own personal [story] beyond, do I still listen to Rubber Soul every week? Yeah.

CM: I love The Beatles. I consider myself kind of an expert, but there are some details Jay knows that I don’t. The Beatles affected culture in a way that Sloan can’t pretend to. But what we can do is make a large body of work. And we’ve gone from [being] the same guys who were talking about skipping school and now they’re talking about kids or sports. I just like the consistent story. 

• Author
• Recent Posts

Dave Steinfeld

Dave Steinfeld has been writing about music professionally since 1999. Since then, he has contributed to Bitch, BUST, Blurt, Classic Rock UK, Curve, Essence, No Depression, QueerForty, Spinner, Wide Open Country and all the major radio networks. Dave grew up in Connecticut and is currently based in New York City.

Latest posts by Dave Steinfeld (see all)

• Gumboots: Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ Turns 40 - August 27, 2026
• In Quintessence: Squeeze’s ‘East Side Story’ At 45 - May 15, 2026
• If the ‘Shoes’ Fit… - March 31, 2026