Sunday, September 11, 2005

Sloan, controller.controller @ U of T orientation week (9/9/05)

OK, they like discopunk. They sound not one iota different from the last time I saw them over a year ago, and until controller.controller write one tune that's one-tenth as breathless as Blondie's "Atomic" (in itself being only the 15th or 20th most breathless, exciting Blondie song) then I'll be leaving them alone.

Speaking of bands whose songs all sound the same, we have Sloan's brand of noisy, harmony-drenched, guitar pop. It's no surprise that they break out the greatest hits set for the occasion, which had many in the crowd singing along -- and some of them were actually frosh!

But only two songs into the show, I'm struck by a sobering thought. As 1992's "Underwhelmed" resonates around the sun-drenched field to general indifference, I realize that at that moment, it could have been MY frosh orientation. A dozen years later, here I am, on the same campus, listening the sort of indie rock that I didn't much care for at the time! Thankfully, the Sloan boys make no attempt to come across as anything other than the collective frosh's geeky and not-so-in-touch-anymore older brothers. Ah yes, they're from my generation, I thought while eyeballing hundreds of cute, unattainable girls.

Back in the day, we all had a good laugh as Sloan morphed from slacker kids into britpoppers seemingly overnight (even though the songs were fairly good -- strangely enough, we had the same reaction when Bryan Adams did the same thing ... hmm). While Chris Murphy was trying to out-Lennon Liam Gallagher, the band continued to write summertime singalong after summertime singalong, until they had gradually turned into Canada's version of Oasis without the, you know, bullshit that you have to put up with if you're a fan of Oasis and the assholes that populate that band. There is no greater use for them and their greatest hits CD than to blast it at as many summer festivals as possible lest the band grow old and stop caring about these songs.

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