At first glance, Sloan’s new album looks like a return to formula. Following 2006’s 30-song-long Never Hear the End of It, Parallel Play has typically Sloan-y cover art and features 13 songs, with each member sharing front-man duties. It would be easy to write it off as another disc to throw in the pile of OK but forgettable post-’90s Sloan albums. It’s more than that, though.

Parallel Play doesn’t have a lot of obvious radio hits, but it does feature some of the most consistent songs the band has written in years. There’s Jay Ferguson’s sweet AM pop on “Cheap Champagne” and “Witch’s Wand,” the hot boogie of “Burn For It,” the pretty and bittersweet “Living the Dream” and the Dylan-fronting-The Band raucousness of “Down in the Basement” — none of it sounds exactly like anything the band has done before, but it all still has that warm familiarity. Sure, there are some solid stinkers in the mix, but for a band that has so long been dogged by comparisons to groups from the past, Sloan can securely and confidently say that they sound like no one but their own selves.