A few records after their career-defining 1996 third album,
One Chord Leads to Another,
Sloan seemed to fall into a trap that snared many classicist guitar pop bands: their devotion to classic hooks and harmonies, the very thing that set them apart from their peers, began to turn from fresh to familiar. Not that the band's skills diminished, but they were now merely reliable, with each new album offering subtle variations on their signature sound: one might be a little sunnier, one might be a little rougher, but each record could easily be classified as just another good
Sloan album. All of this makes their eighth album,
Never Hear the End of It, such a welcome shock: it's unmistakably the work of the same band that loves '60s guitar rock -- everything from Merseybeat to
the Velvet Underground -- as much as they love new wave and college rock, but they have found a way to make the familiar sound fresh again by constructing the album as a seamless suite spread over 30 songs and fitting on a single CD. The easiest touchstone, of course, is the second side of
Abbey Road, where brief snippets separated longer songs that were often multi-segmented, as they are here, but
Never Hear the End of It isn't nearly as lush or grandiose as
the Beatles' career-capping final recorded album. It's densely saturated with color, yet it's also lean and direct; it may swirl with rushes of psychedelic harmonies and shards of punk guitars, but it's precisely constructed upon the quartet's knack for sharp, memorable pop hooks, so there's a sense of momentum and purpose in how the album winds through the detours and main roads on these 30 songs. This has some of the shaggy eclecticism of
The White Album, yet it flows like
Rundgren's deliberate head trip
A Wizard, a True Star, all the while never abandoning
Sloan's pop strengths, which makes
Never Hear the End of It a rather remarkable piece of art pop -- one where the concept is evident, but one where the pop elements are never sacrificed for art. Cut for cut, segment for segment, this is as indelible as the best of
Sloan, but here the emphasis is not on the individual songs, as it has been on each of their albums in the past decade: the emphasis is on how each of these pieces, each of these hooks, joins together to create a kind of sonic sculpture.
Never Hear the End of It is as concrete as that, but it's also a record to get lost in, since it is dense with alluring details that create its own distinct atmosphere. Coming from a band that seemed to be settled comfortably within its own sound, this kind of album is indeed a surprise, but this layered, kaleidoscopic album would not have been possible without good straight-ahead records like
Action Pact: on those albums, they mastered their popcraft, and here they apply what they've learned on an inventive, excellent record that's their much-needed next great step forward.