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4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
A "best of" from one of the great pop bands in the history of rock Feb 09, 2007
For the life of me I don't know where I learned about Sloan. But I confess it was only recently and I must further admit some shame at never before having heard of such a magnificent band. I started doing some research and discovered that when they were first breaking out in a big way in Canada, their record company decided that the kind of power pop they played would not go over well in the United States, where post-Nirvana grunge was dominating the rock scene. This was certainly my loss, since some of my all time favorite bands--the Beatles, Big Star, the Shoes, and the Smithereens--were all power pop bands. I started asking some of my more musical savvy friends about Sloan and was surprised that none of them had heard of the band either. And after poking around on some chat boards, I'm convinced that Sloan may be the greatest band around that the United States remains in complete ignorance about. Since first finding out about Sloan, I've been frantically rushing about getting as many of their albums as possible and am now convinced that except for the New Pornographers, they may be the best band out of Canada in the past couple of decades at least.
A SIDES WIN is a superb overview of Sloan's albums, but I have to add a qualifier. Some best-of anthologies can distort a band, making them sound better on a single disc than they do on individual albums. What is astonishing about Sloan is that most of their individual albums are very nearly as good as this greatest hits disc. There is no sharp drop off in quality between the songs that made the A-Sides discs and those that didn't. In fact, many of the songs that I have most enjoyed on individual albums did not make this disc.
This is power pop, a genre that has wide but not universal appeal. I absolutely love it. To me there is nothing more exciting than a band that can combine a strong of marvelous hooks, catchy lyrics, and great musicianship to craft easily accessible and joyous pop songs. Sloan absolutely excels at this form. They have a sort of genius for hook-driven songs, with precisely the right enhancements to put the song over the edge towards perfection: a guitar riff here, some horns there, some tight harmonies, a thick and lush guitar chord, an organ or hand clap. On top of all this they are a wonderfully tight, talented group. They don't quite reach the level of the New Pornographers in their playing, but then who does?
Every song on this disc is stellar and the disc moves from one stunning gem to another. "Underwhelmed" starts the disc off marvelously, but instantly gives way to the equally superb and very upbeat "500 Up." The next song is the wonderful "Coax Me," and a couple of cuts later is "The Good in Everybody." As they say, the hits just keep on coming. Other highlights include "Friendship" about the end of a friendship, "The Rest of My Life" in which the singer expresses grown up thoughts about maturing, and the unusual "The Other Man," in which the singer tells a woman with a boyfriend but with whom he is sleeping while supposedly just a friend expresses his side of things ("I'm the other man/No one's rooting for me").
The only reason not to own this album is if you already own all of Sloan's other albums.
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