The longest goodbye

>> Sloan sheds tear, waves hanky--again

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Does Sloan really need an introduction? Pretty Together is the new, seventh album by Canada's great power-pop-rawk hope, the all-singing, all-writing (but no dancing) Halifax-bred quartet that loads of northern indie kids grew up with. But, with a history of tense splits and premature farewell tours, fans have pointed to the song (and nearly the album's title track) "I Love a Long Goodbye" as either a subtle adios or a deliberate tease. The Mirror spoke to Sloan's mom figure Chris Murphy about the refined Sloan machine and that impending split.



Mirror: Okay, do you want to address the rumour that this is your break-up album?

Chris Murphy: That's not true, but if this record really fails, I think that sort of tells a tale. Personally, I'm still qualified to do nothing else, so I'll be doing this as long as I can, but we may have to rethink a couple of things if we have a huge flop on our hands.

M: I notice there's more songwriting collaboration on this album, but it seems you guys have always been democratic.

CM: At first, it was very much my band, me and my friends. I still feel I'm the central character in terms of communicating, but I'm not the boss or the genius of the band. On the second record, I really wanted to make sure everybody got to write songs so that they were interested in staying in the band--it's this childish thing that I'm really into, the romance of the band that stays together--and then we hit equilibrium, everybody gets three songs. That has its problems because, arguably, I could have a fourth or fifth song that are better than somebody else's third, but who's to say? I'd rather everybody was happy than have wild commercial success.

M: I read that you guys worked on but abandoned some electronic tracks for this album. Are you reluctant to change gears at this stage of the game?

CM: Between our first two records, we were really proud of the fact that we did a complete about-face, even though it was commercial suicide, but after that we fell into a definite limited palette and got tagged as '60s rock, '70s rock and all that shit. Whatever, it's the music we grew up on, but Patrick hates the retro tag. We get called the Beatles-meets-whoever the journalist fuckin' thinks would be funny, and Patrick doesn't even like the Beatles. He's been trying to outrun that for a long time, so he did a bunch of completely space-dance-club music. If we'd only had six weeks to record--like we did on our last record, the commercial failure--and he was feeling, "Fuck you, I'm putting this on," then it would be on our record. But the reality is that you only get three songs that you have to promote for years, and if you use one of them for some crazy dance track, it's like, "Okay, I hope that interests you for two years straight." Anyway, we need fodder for box sets, so those tracks will all come out some day.

With the Dears on Sunday, Oct. 21 at Club Soda, 7pm, $18.50, all ages