| Maybe it’s because their musical career has had more starts and thrills than a rush-hour ride on Deerfoot Trail, but Sloan guitarist-vocalist Patrick Pentland and drummer-vocalist Andrew Scott have managed to turn the looking glass inside out while examining their band’s musical journey.
The Halifax-born, Toronto-based quartet, have switched labels again after beginning their career on their own Murderecords label and then working with larger companies such as Virgin U.S. and DGC over the past 12 years. Their newest release, Action Pact, released this week on BMG, is the first album in years where the band has not owned the master tapes of the recordings.
"What’s the benefit of owning your masters?" Scott says over post-breakfast coffee at the Westin Hotel in Calgary last month. "In the end, people don’t associate those songs with BMG – they associate them with us. We play those songs for the rest of our careers. It’s nice to own them, but really, you only retain the ownership of your masters so you can sell them later, so we just kind of jumped ahead of the queue. We own other records and it hasn’t benefited us either way,"
If it sounds like Scott doth protest too much, Pentland backs up his claims and gives a unique take on an industry in which everyone from world-renowned artists like Paul McCartney to local artists like Mike Stack make a point of owning their own recordings, and thus the control that goes with them.
"You need to get (record companies) a little involved," Pentland says. "You need to almost have them put themselves in debt so they’ll get it (your album) moving. If they don’t own the masters, they have nothing to lose – they’re not going to put any work behind it."
Despite a 12-year career that saw them begin as the next big thing and remain in the garden of critics’ darlings for most of their time together, the band is taking a hard look at where they are and where they wish to be. Of their role as the belle of the musical ball, Scott says the band has never sold enough albums to be knocked by critics or music lovers, like Our Lady Peace or Sum 41 have.
"My personal taste is I’d rather be critically acclaimed, I suppose, than have the piss taken out of us all the time," says Pentland. "It could be that it’s trendy to like us. I think that we work to keep a certain level of quality with what we do. We’re almost criticized because we’re not criticized."
If it’s trendy to like the band, it’s a trend that has carried on through eight albums to date, with Action Pact as the ninth. Scott says the band is "pretty successful" because being in Sloan is the only real job they’ve had, but he’s tired of the holding pattern the band’s been in for the past nine years.
Pentland concurs. "I guess sometimes the worst is to be always doing fine but not liking doing fine. Either kill us or bring us up. To be constantly cruising along as critics’ darling is great, but at some point, I’ve gotta move into your basement."
He blames Canada’s lack of mid-sized venues and record industry politics for contributing to the band’s stasis. "I’ll sign you, then I’ll force you to borrow money offa me. I’ll force you to spend every cent of that on your record, then I’ll take profit and your percentage, (and) I’ll put it against the loan that I gave you. (The) music business doesn’t work in the artist’s favour. It’s the single worst, most unfair industry.
"The porn industry is 10 times more fair than the music industry, I think. Maybe that’s nonsense since I don’t make porn movies. But the profit sharing is unbelievable, and we’ve always tried to even that out in our favour."
Scott says that it helps that the band splits everything an even four ways, no matter who brings the songs to the table, and that the band’s relationship with BMG is good.
"We make our money from live touring. We still have a lot of control – that was one of the main necessities. We’ve got in a lot of fights with big shot record label people and we’ve never backed down."
While Action Pact continues to deliver the goods, with the band’s traditional hook-driven vocal stylings and nods to influences from the British invasion to Kiss, maintaining a holding pattern for nine years can wear on the soul. "We feel older," Scott says. "It’s like anything. You must feel different now than (with) the first story you wrote or the first interview you did. It’s not even jaded, you just kind of get dulled a little. It’s predictable – you know what to expect." |
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