cream! canadian dollar dollar bills y'all.

As S/FJ, DT and JZC are all busy this week, I will be double-dipping. If you don't know how you ended up here, scroll down and work your way up.

Anybody who knows me knows that I don't like Cream. I do, however, like Sloan - some call it an obsession, others a sickness. In any case, over the years my schoolgirl love of Sloan has compelled me to do things like fly hundreds of miles to see them perform a short opening set, or follow random people around campus simply because they are wearing Sloan T-shirts, or push elderly people out of the way to get into a venue (they bore the markings of industry-types, so excuse me for not feeling bad), or befriend Canadian people just so I can ask them, 'Do you like Sloan? They're great, eh?'

I have no explanation for my affections. Sloan is fairly derivative. They started their careers mainlining Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur, then they moved onto aping Fleetwood Mac and Kiss and today they sound a little like all of that, but a little more finished and thus a little more boring. Perhaps I like the fact that all four of them can sing and they trade instruments with ease. It could be that I'm drawn to the way their melodies compensate for the good-but-ultimately-workmanlike quality of their hooks. Maybe it has to do with my short-ass attention span. Peut-etre I just like Canada. Whatever the case may be, 'Stove/Smother' is one of my least-favorite Sloan songs. It is a compression of two Eric's Trip songs and it was recorded as part of a benefit for a Halifax, Nova Scotia radio station. (Predictably, the other side of the record features the shambolic Eric's Trip covering Sloan's fantastic 'Laying Blame.') In both cases, the covering band completely re-imagines the original. A whistling kettle pot could have overwhelmed the original 'Stove,' a loveless duet of girl-boy whispers that was as broken as it was gorgeous. Here, Sloan redoes it using the 'Synthetic Substitution' drums. When this came out, Sloan was putting out Buck 65's tapes back when he went by MC Stinkin' Rich, so maybe he hooked it up. While it's not a bad song with its undressed air and sparse keys, it just nosedives halfway through with that awful, offset 'kick-out-the-jams-eh?' rendition of 'Smother.' You know what, this isn't meant to be some weird streamy flourish but I don't know why I even started talking about 'Stove/Smother.' I'm listening to it again and I'm really not in the mood for those drums. Instead, I offer 'Same Old Flame', my favorite Sloan song. If memory serves, it was recorded while the group was in post-Geffen limbo, and you can tell they were spending a lot of time on the road trying to figure things out. Though I have never been on tour myself, the line that goes 'ate Italian in Germany/spent my money on magazines' appeals to me because it is always weird to eat X food in Y country, and such is the not-so-profound substance of conversations you might eke out with a loved one while the two of you are separated by many, many miles.

In any case, it took me nearly eight years to find this 45. Now, thanks to the Interweb, it is yours for the clicking.

Posted by Hua at October 29, 2004 09:05 PM