Retrospective Review: Sloan, 'One Chord To Another'

After Sloan released 1994's Twice Removed, a pop-rock album that Geffen refused to promote, the four-piece returned to Halifax. They were done with Geffen but they still had their own label, Murderecords. But Andrew Scott had met the love of his life and was moving to Toronto; by some accounts, Chris Murphy was mad. There were other tensions. Depending on the source, from ’94 to ’96, Sloan broke up, stayed together and took a hiatus. And at some point, they made the forever beautiful One Chord to Another.

One Chord is Sloan's redemption record. Not redemption in the eyes of David Geffen Company or even a sustainable American audience but rather in terms of further defining who and what Sloan was. On this album, Sloan turned out to be a four-man fronted rock band with a knack for making polished classics.

First released on June 12 on their own label, the album's blue and black cover, which is reminiscent of Andrew's catalogue of monochromatic visual art, set the tone for the next decades of Sloan's song-writing patterns and individual sonic trends: as on the album’s cover, three would be more prominent than four.

Of the 12 tracks, five belong to Murphy, three are owned by Patrick Pentland and two each are credited to A. Scott and J. Ferguson. Of those four, Jay's "The Lines You Amend" was the only hit single. It’s pretty well-known by now, and especially in light of Sloan's newest LP, Commonwealth, that the secret to their longevity is democratic and Musketeerish: Sloan says they have always divided all revenue from tours, albums and endorsements in a four-way even split, regardless of who is doodling out the hits.

Lazy music journalists have ruined the word 'sophomore' by using it to describe pretty much any second anything. But I’m using it metaphorically when I say that One Chord is Sloan's most sophomoric effort. And it's not even their second record, but it feels like it. Where Twice Removed was cutely elementary -- braces, swing sets, pen pals -- One Chord is full of regrets, harder feelings, hurt feelings and lessons.

It makes more sense to discuss these songs by writer rather than sequence. Pentland whipped up two hits for One Chord, "The Good in Everyone" and "Everything You’ve Done Wrong." Both were experiments in form. "The Good in Everyone" is laid over an audio track from a live show (“Would you please welcome to the stage … SLOOOAAN!”) and "Everything You've Done Wrong" brings trumpets into the mix. Both were very radio and commercially viable. I bet they’re playing on a radio station somewhere in Canada right this moment. And both videos, which were DIY in feel, had tons of Much Music rotation.

Ferguson's songs have a whole different vibe than Pentland’s, however. The heart-breaking "Junior Panthers" and "The Lines You Amend" were probably why people dismissed the record as “Beatles-y.” But Sloan and the British Invasion analogies just barely represented the album. Jay's influences were much wider than The Beatles, filtered through his unique artistic prism and deep musical obsessions. Jay’s style on One Chord is consistent all the way through to Parallel Play and The Double XX.

Anyway, One Chord is Chris Murphy-heavy. But it's forgiven because "Autobiography" is one of the most poetically dynamic rock songs in Canadian music. The puns are killer: the "former and latter" of the first verse turn into the "foamer and lather" of the second. It's a class act. Andrew Scott's “A Side Wins” has piano, Abbey Road interludes and a classic tone. And, much like Scott, "400 Metres" is an outsider, partly because the song sounds like the most contemporary one on the album. Should have been bigger, IMO.

The tracking and audio tricks -- crescendos and fade-outs, maracas, spoken live tracks -- made the best of Sloan's adolescent energy, a little more put together and distinguished from their earlier releases.

In 1997, American label, The Enclave, released One Chord. It wasn’t a huge hit, sadly. Sloan was out-nerded by Weezer, too clean to compete with The Smashing Pumpkins and worse bands were making shittier (but somehow more popular) ballads. Bad timing? I'm not sure, but they did pretty well in Japan!

Like Twice Removed before it, One Chord is a classic rock and pop and alt-rock album that appreciates in value. It's also like one of those pre-assigned group projects where no one gets along but the presentation is still really cool, and it established Sloan as the most uniquely structured band in Canada.