Sloancast

A/S/L? On this episode, we fall deep into the phenomenon that was 90s web superfandom with the one and only Alan Wong, alias SquirrelAl—webmaster of the legendary Sloan Hut. We wax nostalgic about Sloan Chat meetups, Pictures of the Week and forum escapades, as well as about friendships forged on the information superhighway that stand the test of time. To all Gen Zs and Alphas out there: you kinda had to be there.

We are back — and once again joined by Trenton, NJ based musician and Sloan superfan Aaron Pinto. In this sequel to last year's Drum Challenge, Rob and Aaron attempt to correctly guess the Sloan song based on its isolated bass track. How many of the 20 songs up for speculation did you get right?

We dig into the Sloancast vault and uncover an entertaining conversation with artist and musician Brian Walsby about his newfound love for the GBOAT and his involvement as honorary merch-artist-in-residence. Join us down a rabbit hole of '80s punk bands, album cover cartoons, and just plain ol' good music.

Travis and Dave from the band Heron & Crane come back to Sloancast to dive into their experiences with the GBOAT's sophomore album and to discuss each of Twice Removed's tracks in detail with us.

We're (finally) back and we're finally addressing the elephant in the room. After four years, the time has come to discuss what many consider to be the band's greatest accomplishment: 1994's Twice Removed. As the album celebrates its 30th anniversary, we delve into what makes it a crucial part of where the band is today, and why critical acclaim might have come so late. Stay tuned for more episodes as the anniversary year rolls on!

This episode is a real haymaker: we had the pleasure of welcoming hitmaker Patrick Pentland back to Sloancast to discuss the band's goings-on in 2024, including the anticipated release of a Smeared reissue box set. Listen to Patrick go into depth about the band's salad days in 1992, 1993 and the slow march towards their second release, Twice Removed.

We welcome producer, record collector and legendary liner-note-writer Chris Trowbridge (aka Chico T. Sanchez) as we discuss the Halifax music scene of the early 90s and dive deep into the sentiment around the creation of One Chord to Another. Plus, we get the inside angle on his creation of OCTA's famous sleeve blurb.

Sloan's 12th studio album — 2018's aptly titled "12" — is an exercise in collaboration and Sloanocracy. After half a dozen years of ripening, we're joined by musician and power pop connoisseur Julian Muia to take a retrospective look at the album and discuss it's place within the GBOAT pantheon.

As a bookend to our "Openers" episode, we individually rank and discuss each of the closing tracks to Sloan's 13 studio albums and reveal the Sloancast community rankings as well. If it feels nearly impossible to rank these tracks, it's because it is.

What makes a great opening track? In this episode, we dig into the openers to each of the band's 13 studio album releases to date. Rob and Ken deliver their own rankings, and we also reveal the Sloancast community's ranking of these seminal tracks.

In celebration of our 50th episode, we invited superfan, artist and early Sloan internet celebrity Elaine Hsu to tell us her story. Join us as we chat about about the early Sloan fan internet community, the Psychotically Obsessed Sloan Fan Page, the viral phenomenon that was/is "Simpsloans"/"Sloansons", as well as her encounters with the band over the years.

Think you know Sloan? How's your musical acumen? How attentive of a listener are you? Rob and recurring guest Aaron Pinto try to guess 20 Sloan songs based alone off of an isolated clip of their drum tracks. Play along (no cheating!) and let us know how many you got right!

We were thrilled to be able to welcome Odds frontman and Trans-Canada Highwaymen member Craig Northey to Sloancast! Listen in to hear about the upcoming Odds studio LP, his musical upbringing and approach to composition, intersections throughout the years with Sloan, as well as the inside scoop on the CanRock hockey community.

We may have missed the official 30th anniversary of Sloan's debut LP last year, but the time has finally come to delve deep into Smeared. We welcome fellow Sloan superfan and hardcore/grunge/shoegaze connoisseur Greg Polard back to Sloancast as we discuss the meteoric success of the band in 1992 and the impact that Smeared had on the band's eventual trajectory. And in classic Sloancast fashion, we also piece apart each track in excruciating detail.

We talk to NYC-based Sloan superfan and band t-shirt creator extraordinaire, Gordon Kenny (alias Double Wonderful), about his Sloan-centric family upbringing and the New York Sloan concert scene throughout the years. Plus, find out about the exclusive band t-shirt he designed for Sloan's April 20th gig at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City.

To round off our three-part 20th anniversary special on Action Pact, Chris Murphy joins us to give the inside scoop on the period in the band's history leading up to the album, as well as on the album's recording and production. He also gives us his reactions to each of the tracks after two decades of maturation.

As part of our continuing celebration of the 20th anniversary of the band's 2003 album "Action Pact", we take a look at each of the album's songs in succession.

In this 20th anniversary year of the release of the album, we discuss 2003's Action Pact in detail both from the perspective of the events leading up to the release (including the aftershock of the Pretty Together era) as well as with a view to the band's changing creative processes. Plus, Emily Plunkett joins us to give an update on her bid to get the band into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

We round off 2022 with an interview with author and musician Greg Rhyno, whose debut novel "To Me You Seem Giant" takes a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical glance at the Canadian indie rock scene of the mid-90s, including depictions of the members of Sloan and other Murderecords artists. Plus, Rob spills the beans on his brief-yet-illustrious career as drummer of Sloan.

To round off our series of interviews with the four members of Sloan, we sit down with Jay Ferguson and chat about his own "cradle-to-Sloan" story. Tune in to find out more about Jay's gig at Old Dan's Records, about his pre-Sloan careers with Deluxe Boyd and Kearney Lake Rd., about his love for collecting music paraphernalia, and about his almost-career as a professional baseball player.

Join us as we dive into the band's 13th studio album "Steady", due for release on October 21st, 2022. Find out why this band just keeps getting better on each and every outing!

In our first-ever (partially) in-person interview, we sit down with musician, drone enthusiast and guitar/instrument tech to the GBOAT, Haris Cehajic, to talk about his history as part of the band's road crew, the band's upcoming 13th studio album "Steady", as well as his directorial debut for the first single off of this album, "Scratch the Surface". We also entertain our first-ever call-in guest.

You like ranking stuff? So does Sloancast. Join us as we each individually rank the 16 covers of Sloan's major releases (13 studio LPs, 2 major EPs, 1 live album) from least favourite to favourite, discussing along the way the merits of each piece of artwork.

Move over, Lennon & McCartney: there's a "new" lead vocal amalgam from the colonies whose double helix harmonic stylings will blow your minds. In this episode, we discuss the iconic lead vocal combination of Patrick Pentland and Chris Murphy, illustrated through ten examples from across the catalogue.

In this episode, we sit down with Toronto-born, California-based writer, journalist, musician and all-round Cancon renaissance man Paul Myers to chat about his own overlap with the Greatest Band of All Time, Sloan's place in the power pop canon, and the correlation between comedy and music. Be sure to check out Paul's Record Store Day Podcast as well as his upcoming documentary The Kids In The Hall: Comedy Punks!

Together with NYC-based writer and podcaster Ben Lindbergh, we tackle 2008's Parallel Play—an album sandwiched between the classic statements Never Hear The End of It and Hit & Run, and which, despite now being chronologically in the middle of their career, in many ways signals the beginning of the latest phase in the band's sound. Ben also takes us through his own personal Sloan story, including the perhaps only instance (yet) of an on-stage proposal over the band's 30-year career.

In this episode (which has been a Long Time Coming), Rob takes a virtual trip south of the border to sunny Los Feliz, Los Angeles to chat with singer-songwriter/musical multi-talents Ned Brower and Taylor Locke. Find out about the musicians' longtime appreciation of the GBOAT, about their particular admiration of 2001's Pretty Together, as well as about their own personal encounters with the Sloan throughout their own careers.

In this post-mortem look at the band's "Alive & Alright" concert footage from February 2000, we're joined by Ron Baker (aka Blue Suit Ron), who was present at the taping of the special.

In this emergency episode of Sloancast, we set the time machine for February 4th, 2000 and the filming of a live performance of the entire Between the Bridges album in front of a select group of 40 fans—the result of which will eventually spawn the "Friendship" music video. Prior to the release of the footage on Side Door on this February 4th, we chat with superfan Laura (Q) Mayo, who attended the original show, and talk to Rob about his own run-in with the concert footage.

Kicking off the 31st year of Sloan, we continue with our hand-picked playlist concept "Sloancast 30". In part 2, we talk through tracks 16-30 of this selection—intended to highlight everything great about the greatest band of all time and convert even the pickiest of (not-yet-indoctrinated) music snobs.

If you had to create a playlist to convince a non-Sloan fan about the band's greatness, what songs would you pick? To commemorate the end of the greatest band of all time's 30th anniversary year, we asked ourselves this very question. The result is the Sloancast 30, a hand-picked selection of tracks that embody the special qualities of the band and helps tell their story. So not our favourite 30 tracks per se, but the most meaningful. And not ABBA Gold, but rather "More ABBA Gold".

We sit down with Dave Gibson and Travis Kokas from the band Heron & Crane to talk about their lifelong superfandom for Sloan, including reflections on on-stage and off-stage encounters with the band and with other groups in the Murderecords/Sloan-adjacent universe. Plus: why Dave is the real reason why Pretty Voice and Pick It Up And Dial It aren't played live any more, and why Travis might have the most impressive Sloan collection of anyone out there.

For this special one-year anniversary episode of Sloancast, we were honoured to have been able to sit down and chat with Sloan's very own Chris Murphy about his early years and his musical upbringing—through to the formation of the GBOAT (Greatest Band of All Time) in 1991. Get the inside scoop on Chris's musical influences, on the carousel of bands he featured in during the '80s, and on the series of events that led to the formation of Sloan.

Ten years on from the album's release, we are joined by regular guest Aaron Pinto to tackle 2011's The Double Cross track by track. In this, the most compact of their 12 studio albums to date, the band established one of its most unique production statement and signalled the beginning of their contemporary sound.

The BPM is about to skyrocket: In our first podcast collab episode, we're joined by Greg Polard—host of the Somethin To Dü and Where It Went podcasts—to discuss Sloan's hardcore influences, and specifically their 2013 Hardcore 7" (Jenny/It's In You, It's In Me) as well as the supplementary Hardcore Covers EP.

It was so nice, we talked to him twice: in part two of our discussion with multi-talented multi-instrumentalist Gregory Macdonald, we chat about his contributions to Sloan studio recordings since 2008's Parallel Play, about injuries and spontaneously filling in for band members, as well as about Greg's own solo projects—including 2020's Cola Wars and the upcoming New Age Doom project featuring Lee "Scratch" Perry.

He's Sloan's veritable Fifth Beatle, and he's finally making his appearance on Sloancast: in part one of our two-parter, we sit down with musical multi-talent Gregory Macdonald as he recounts his musical upbringing and his path to becoming an integral part of the greatest band of all time.

In our continuing coverage of the 20th anniversary of Pretty Together, we turn back the dials to October 30th, 2001 and tune in together to Much Music for the band's televised "Live @ MUCH" show. Watch along with us on YouTube or just listen in as normal! And don't miss Rob's television debut (even in 2001, he was asking the tough questions).

If you've ever looked into the liner notes of a Sloan album, her name will be familiar to you, and if you've ever picked up a "classic-era" Sloan album, you'll have seen her work: on the latest episode of Sloancast, we talk to Catherine Stockhausen about Sloan (and other bands that you'll know) through her lens.

On the latest episode of Sloancast, podcast regular Aaron Pinto joins us to reflect on the importance and the greatness of Sloan's "One Chord To Another" upon its 25th anniversary. In the first of our anniversary OCTA-related talks, we dote on the album's sonic place within the band's catalogue, on the reason it was the gateway for so many new Sloan fans, and on why Sloan is the Wu-Tang Clan of rock music.

Calling all multiverse theorists! On the latest episode of Sloancast, we hypothesize on the direction that the band's second album might have taken had Sloan/DGC decided to continue in a grungier direction similar to Smeared and the band's '93 material—as opposed to creating what would become Twice Removed. Brace yourselves for the selection of our "Smeared 2" single.

It's the guest you've all been waiting for: join us for our talk with Sloan crew all-rounder Kevin Hilliard (aka Skip Lowe, "Lamps" Hilliard, Kevrock, The Clapper), as we touch upon topics as diverse as MRCH 108.8, setting up and tearing down shows, practical jokes on tour, Bruce Dickinson's stubble, Black Abba, and Emilio Estevez.

In the latest episode of Sloancast, we sit down for a chat with Halifax music stalwart and producer of Pepperment and Smeared, Terry Pulliam. Get the inside scoop on the Hear and Now contest that launched the band's career, on the recording techniques used during the Pepperment/Smeared sessions, on early band gear, and on the true namesake of Gus' Pub in North End Halifax!

We were thrilled to be able to sit down with Patrick "The Hitmaker" Pentland for a chat on Ripping Convulsions, sobriety, being the band's bassist for about a month, songwriting processes, and why the Jesus and Mary Chain in fact have Patrick to thank for their post-2007 renaissance. Plus: get the inside scoop on a new Sloan album in the works for the near future.

We finally delve into the album that polarizes the Sloan fanbase (both casual and super) the most—2001's Pretty Together. Join us and our special guest Travis Stokl (drummer extraordinaire of The Elwins) as we examine the album's meaning in the oeuvre, the reason why it "sticks out", and why it's one of the most underrated elements of the band's legacy. 2021 is a Pretty Together anniversary year, so get ready for more content soon!

In this all-superfan episode of Sloancast, we chat with artist manager, direct-to-fan expert, music educator and Sloan crew member Jay Coyle (Music Geek Services) about his own superfandom for the band, stories from the tour bus, and the genesis of merch and fan articles. Plus: a sneak peek into the band's release plans for the near future!

We delve into the musical scene of Halifax in the 1980s and 1990s and talk to guests and 30-plus-year fans and friends of the band Stephen Cooke and Shant Pelley about proto-Sloan band formations, strange bar opening hours, the Peppermint "CD release" show, and a long, lost fan tribute cassette (that might yet see the light of day).

We join Andrew Scott in his frigid Toronto garage studio for a chat about youth, musical origins and visual art. Learn about his early band experience, about the development of his visual art praxis, and about the true meaning of his lyrical content.

In this "Sloancast snackable", we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band's first concert (on February 8th, 1991 at the NSCAD cafeteria in Halifax) by launching a new format: join us for a live watchalong of the video footage of the concert that the band graciously shared to commemorate the occasion.

Together with our guest Aaron Pinto, we wrap up our side-by-side dissection of Sloan's 2014 double LP, talking to the Shamrock and Spade sides. How many distinct parts of Forty-Eight Portraits can you count?

Where does one begin when it comes to discussing Sloan's perhaps most unique album project, 2014's Commonwealth? A good starting point is to invite writer and Sloan superfan Aaron Pinto back for a chat on this contemporary-era gem. In this episode, listen to us get carried away about the complex beauty of the first LP of the double album, featuring the Diamond (Jay) and Heart (Chris) sides.