The Party Spilled Into The Street

Sloan @ Bowery Ballroom 1/18/2007
Flying High Again / Who Taught You To Live Like That? / Will I Belong? / Ill Placed Trust / The Other Man / The Lines You Amend / Fading Into Obscurity / Golden Eyes / Love Is All Around / Living With The Masses / HFXNSHC / Blackout / All Used Up / C’mon C’mon / Everybody Wants You / I Understand / You Know What It’s About / Someone I Can Be True With / Money City Maniacs / I Can’t Sleep / I Know You / Something’s Wrong / I’ve Gotta Try / Everything You’ve Done Wrong / Can You Figure It Out? / Penpals / The Good In Everyone / Another Way I Could Do It // Anyone Who’s Anyone / Chester The Molester / If It Feels Good, Do It

Sloan “Flying High Again / Who Taught You To Live Like That?” – If you recall, back around October I went to see Sloan play during the Pop Montreal festival, and part of the motivation for that was that I wanted to see them perform in front of a bunch of intense superfans in a nation where they are mainstream rock stars because I didn’t think I would get a similar experience in the United States. Though the audience in Montreal was pretty into that show, they could not compete with the enthusiasm of the (larger) crowd at the Bowery Ballroom last night. I don’t know, maybe the room was full of Canadian expats, but it was exciting, and the band earned their adulation with a generous 31 song set focusing mainly on their latest and greatest album, Never Hear The End Of It.

For a record containing 30 tracks penned by four different songwriters, Never Hear The End Of It is remarkable for both its density of high quality material, and its thematic and musical consistency. The songs go off in a number of lyrical tangents, but each member spends a bit of time coming to terms with the state of their career with varying levels of ambivalence, suggesting that they had some sort of quiet collective midlife crisis that resulted in a re-energized commitment to their craft rather than an unfortunate implosion. It’s telling that “Flying High Again” is the song that kicks off both the album and the setlist — it’s a show of solidarity in that it’s the only song in their discography featuring lead vocals from all four members, and even though the lyrics are riddled with uncertain language, its sentiment is both optimistic and defiant; basically “hey, we’re better than ever, and we’re not going away because we have nowhere to go.” (Click here to buy it from Yep Roc.)

I was also lucky enough to help out with their live session at WFMU earlier in the day. I’ll come back and discuss that a bit more at a later date, but those recordings will debut on a forthcoming episode of Terre T’s Cherry Blossom Clinic. The band made use of the new WFMU studio piano, and performed moody rainy day versions of “Another Way I Could Do It,” “HFXNSHC,” “Everybody Wants You,” “Who Taught You To Live Like That?,” and “Blackout.” The latter came the closest to the feel of the album arrangement, though they were performing it in rehearsal with heavy reverb and a somewhat motorik-ish beat that they were calling the “Stereolab version” of the song. They were also rehearsing a piano-based version of “Ana Lucia,” but unfortunately that didn’t make it to the final session etiher.