Best Sloan Record

and lately i came to the conclusion that my answer is Navy Blues

Another one for Navy Blues with close seconds to 'One Chord to Another' and 'Never Hear The End of It' ...

Parallel Play is fun but a bit samey

you were reading my thoughts

Will either vote for One Chord or Never Hear, with Navy Blues as a very distant 3rd and the others more or less tied for 4th.

Twice Removed if only for their masterpiece "Penpals." When I interviewed them around the time, they wouldn't tell me that the letters were originally sent to Nirvana. But I guess it's common knowledge now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_Removed

And oh gawd they're soooo pretty!

Go Canada!!!!

I'm gonna make the stereotypical remark here that I find Sloan to be really, really boring.

Why do you find them boring?

the best songs in "One Chord" are the best Sloan songs ever, but "Navy" as a whole is a better album, with less fillers.

about Sloan = boring - it can be true if you don't like (simple good-written) power pop, or if you didnt listen to them enough so that the hooks would stick to youre brain forever.

<i>Twice Removed</i>!

plus, in "Navy" theres the best Beatles ripoff song ever "seems so heavy" - the best song Robert Pollard never written.
money city maniacs, stand by me yeah...a delight

the best songs in "One Chord" are the best Sloan songs ever

-- Zeno

So many albums. I couldn't get into Never Hear The End of It. I know there's good songs on it, but it did seem to never end. Parallel Day comes out June 10.

It's probably unfair for me to vote for "Never hear the end of it" because it's the only album of theirs I own, but I love it to bits. Used it as the soundtrack for my charity walk over the old Severn Bridge a few Sundays ago, managed to get over the bridge and back before the end of "Last time in love".

Twice Removed. Though the edition of One Chord To Another with the bonus Sloan Party CD comes close.

I am suddenly reminded that it has been years since I've been to Sneaky Dees.

Am still really surprised and heartened at how much I love NHTEoI; I had absolutely written them off.

Will always be Navy Blues for me, though I think I might agree with Zeno that the best Sloan songs are on One Chord.

will anyone rep for Between The Bridges? at the time it seemed as well regarded as the 2 or 3 albums before it, but when I finally heard it I found it really underwhelming.

Meh. I remember re-listening to it a year or two ago, and thinking it was better than I remembered, but on the whole it seems like it's one of those records that shows a misunderstanding of what made its predecessor great.

Or maybe just a less-than-great collection of songs. It's actually really hard to account for the gulf of BtB->PT->AP.

I think I like Pretty Together more than Between, but I probably need to listen to them more to be sure, I haven't had either for very long (there was a good decade there where the only Sloan albums I had were One Chord and Smeared and the best-of, before Never Hear revived my interest in them).

(well the best-of I obviously didn't have for a decade)

I'll vote for Smeared here; not much of a power-pop guy, but the shoegaze influence in the guitars make this record semi-tolerable. "Underwhelmed" in particular, great song there.

would have voted for their first release,"peppermint" had it been listed. short blast of pure power pop! so i had to vote "smeared" as i too think "underwhelmed" is a great song.

man, these guys have terrible cover art

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"parallel play" is actuly very good.
includes some touches of 70's dylan folk in it,sort of a ramones tribute song, another britpop style song of a bunch of cheap trick influnced melodies

or you can say it's the "Never hear the end" part 2, only shorter.

'never hear the end of it' far outperformed my expectations. it is their usual power pop pastiche, but i found the format pretty engaging. an element of sprezzatura to it.

whenever i hear it, i wish i could hear queen do 'live the life youre dreaming of' completely over the top style

Navy Blues is one of my top 5 driving records of all time.

and the rest are?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I decided to vote for my sentimental favorite One Chord but maybe I should've gone with Never Hear, really deserved more votes.

twice removed at the top! =D ...the first side of that cassette is classic from start to finish!!!

Essay question: "Penpals" displays many characteristics of Western imperialism. Defend or refute.

I used to love Sloan, but i always broke the albums into constituent parts by songwriter.

Between the Bridges has three great Jay songs - 'Waiting for Slow Songs', 'Don't You Believe A Word', and 'Take Good Care Of The Poor Boy'.

Pretty Together only has good Andrew songs - 'The Great Wall', 'In The Movies', and 'Never Seeing The Ground For The Sky.'

The rate of return on Action Pact is really low - all I can pull out of it is 'Hollow Head', 'I Was Wrong', and 'False Alarm'. The rest isn't even mediocre, just really dull.

I'm neither Canadian nor a power-pop fan per se, which probably disqualifies me from talking about this band. But honestly it's Parallel Play and Never Hear The End of It that I keep coming back to, after years of being kind of meh on their "classic" albums. Hmmmm.

"Everything You've Done Wrong" is such a great song.

"Pretty Together" is the gem of this band's career and i cannot find one person to back me up on that. it was the first time they'd dropped the "now we're THIS kind of band" schtick and acted like themselves. skip the first song, start with "in the movies" and the rest plays together beautifully. imo all their distracting tendencies (patrick's penchent for poorly-executed cockrock, chris's clever-clever lyrics) are reined in. "the great wall", "who you talkin' to", "i love a long goodbye", "are you giving me back my love?"...really really beautiful album.

I got a real kick out of "Pen Pals" after someone suggested it from 'The Best 10 Songs of the 90s Thread'
The lyrics are awesome. I'm not sure how I missed that one
They are great live

I went off them after 96 - I mean, I bought the next couple of albums but was utterly uninterested in playing them. This poll's got it right, their first 3 are solid. I imagine a best-of would be perfect as well.

Where was I when this poll was happening? We'd have had a clear winner had I voted! (for Twice Removed)

I love Navy Blues and Pretty Together, though. As I've stated many times before.

now i think NHTEOI is their best record.lots of great songs,not so many fillers.
"twice removed" and "one chord" got some great tracks on them,probably their best in terms of production, but also too many fillers

I missed this poll. Would've voted for Navy Blues but I haven't heard the last two.

All I know by this band is "False Alarm" but I love love love this song. Well, I picked up Between the Bridges in a dollar bin maybe 8 years ago and it never stuck with me. But "False Alarm" is a perfect song, loaded with hooks. Are there other songs, or even albums, that are this good? Where do you recommend turning next, if anywhere, with this band?

on a whim i listened to one chord to another. it was ok, but kept thinking, hmm, maybe they weren't all i remembered. then played never hear the end of it. that is one powerpop banger after another. it is so so fucking good. damn. i have not listened to any of their stuff since that though. recommendations?

I like The Double Cross and Navy Blues a lot but really they're a pretty consistent "4-7 absolute bangers per LP" type of band

i almost went to navy blues as my refresh over one chord- since i’m curious on newer for now, i’ll try double cross. TY-

Between the Bridges is an overlooked one! As well as its b-sides/Japan bonus tracks (Summers My Season and At the Edge of the Scene) But I can't rep for anything since Never Hear, other than Double Cross as was already mentioned here.

I really liked Double Cross as well. Commonwealth is decent, but kinda loses something by lumping all the songs by each songwriter onto separate sides, as opposed to mixed around through the album.
I've found on the more recent albums, that I've really come to enjoy Jay Ferguson's contributions the most.

they've been in the process of doing boxed sets of their albums, and honestly the albums have all aged well. And the boxes are masterfully curated with many, many goodies.

I interviewed them a half dozen times from 1996 until probably 2010 and saw many shows. I'm stoked to see them again on this tour. Can't believe they are still chugging along.

The putting each songwriter on different sides is Chris Murphy's version of the KISS solo albums. On a lark he once told me that he had a desire to follow the KISS roadmap in that regard. When they did "4 Nights Live", that was their nod to "KISS ALIVE".

i enjoy that info so much, notwithstanding my opinions of kiss. thx for the share-