With Based On The Best Seller, Sloan adds another killer chapter to a 30-year story still being written by all four original members. No gimmicks, no compromises, just classic Sloan.
While most bands don’t get to write their own legacy, Sloan just keeps adding chapters to theirs. Three decades into their career — with all four original members still onboard and still writing, singing, and recording — the Halifax-born, Toronto-based quartet remains one of indie rock’s most enduring success stories. And with Based On The Best Seller, their 14th full-length album, Sloan has delivered another masterpiece.
The facts alone tell a pretty wild tale: an early-'90s breakout from the fertile Halifax scene, a brush with Geffen Records and near implosion, a triumphant DIY pivot with One Chord To Another, a gold-certified run into the 2000s with hits like “Money City Maniacs,” and a rare distiction that includes two double albums, multiple reissues, and zero lineup changes. But Sloan’s real magic lives between those milestones — in the shared vocals, the distinct songwriting voices, the weird stylistic detours that somehow still sound unmistakably like them.
“The style is the style,” says Jay Ferguson of the new album. “We’ve never been a single-vision band — we’ve always been a four-headed one. That might make cohesion tricky, but it’s also what makes Sloan Sloan.”
Recorded with longtime keyboardist Gregory Macdonald in the mix and all four members — Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland, and Andrew Scott — pulling in their usual equal-weight fashion, Based On The Best Seller isn’t built on one concept or sound. And that’s the point. As always, there are harmony-rich pop songs, scrappy rockers, oddball deep cuts, and moments of emotional clarity you never saw coming.
Sloan has never chased a trend or given in to the temptation of the spotlight at the expense of the collective. They've stuck together through relocations, industry shifts, and just about every change the music world could throw at them. They’ve long outgrown the “best Canadian band you’ve never heard of” tag, and they’re well past proving anything. Sloan is a band that makes albums like people breathe — rhythmically, steadily, and together.