Parallel Play

iTunes Review

After the 30-track onslaught of 2007’s Never Hear the End of It, this Canadian quartet comes back here with the more traditional 13-track Parallel Play. Sloan, however, have become less a band than a recording and performing vehicle for its four members' songwriting forays. Drummer Andrew Scott played all the instruments for his four diverse contributions that include the hit and run aggression of “Emergency 911,” while lead guitarist Patrick Pentland used the other members sparingly. But despite arriving from four different initiation points, the music comes together as a psychedelic pastiche, with guitar riffs and waves of keyboard aiming for straight pop (“Believe In Me”) or trippy late-‘60s type experiments. (Pentland’s “The Other Side” segues perfectly into Scott’s “Down in the Basement,” which flows seamlessly into guitarist Jay Ferguson’s piano-based pop tune “If I Could Change Your Mind.”) Sloan sound as if they’ve emerged from the era of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and the Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle with the variety and loose approach of the Beatles’ White Album clearly on their minds.