Sharing The (Common) Wealth: An Interview with Sloan’s Chris Murphy

Before you created Commonwealth, what did you think when you heard the term “concept album”?

I would have gotten my back up at the idea of a concept album. It sounds over-baked.  If you call The Kinks are the Village Preservation Society a concept album, then it’s great. The Kinks took the concept albums to incredible levels because they were trying to tell a story. It also didn’t hurt that Ray Davies – at least I think – is the best songwriter in all of rock.  Then again you have Tommy for example, where the songs were stronger than the story was.

And what kind of stories are you trying to tell on Commonwealth?

The only story we’re really telling is the story of a democracy taken to such extremes that you can hear the conflicts that caused in the songs themselves.

Switching gears, we’ve reached the 20th anniversary of Twice Removed. How do you remember the first day of recording that album?

It was in Hoboken, New Jersey.  We actually re-released that album in 2012 with videos I shot while we were recording. It was mostly of us just kind of flabbergasted what we were seeing. Like, gold records from Lenny Kravitz and modules that were used on Sgt. Peppers and Beggars Banquet. It was like being a wide-eyed kid.

That album received heaping amounts of praise from critics. What was your reaction when the reviews first started rolling in?

The initial reviews were actually terrible. It was a giant flop. We couldn’t even get any money to make a video at first.

All I can remember was glowing praise.

Well, it DID get praise, but it wasn’t for about a year or so. When it came out, Grunge was still king and that was our way to turn our back on it.  This was a Britpop followup to Smeared, which pointedly WAS a more grunge album. Twice Removed sold something like 9,000 copies in that first year.

Was there a spike after Chart Attack named it the best Canadian album of all time?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a crazy exaggeration to call it that, but that helped the album go gold. We were also broken up at the time, so that kind of praise really helped push us back together as a band.

Around 1994-1995, you guys split up for about a year. Can you take us through the reasons why that happened?

Well, we’d actually broken up in late 1994. Things weren’t really working out and we just fucking hated each other at the time. Then out of nowhere we got these high paying offers to play a whole bunch of shows so we kept it together for that. I think our last Canadian show was at Edgefest in 1995, then some club show in Buffalo. We’d gotten some time apart and I think we all got back together – just to hang out – around Christmas. We just all kind of agreed to try out some new demos. Jay and I had some stuff already recorded and then Andrew actually recorded all the drums in one shot and that’s how One Chord to Another came about.

Was there any pressure to keep the sound on Twice Removed moving forward?

There was, but we had a really cool A&R guy. He was the guy who signed us, and he was the guy who encouraged us to stick to our guns and do whatever we wanted.

What was the deal with the Andy Sabola drum cover?

Andrew actually found that at a garage sale in 1996 and just loved it, so he just put it on his own kit. I think it made its way into the “The Good In Everyone” video.

Did you book yourselves under that name for some secret shows? 

I think so, yeah. I DO remember we booked ourselves for some secret shows as “Solan Selectives”, because “Solan” has the same letters in it as… Sloan? Get it?

How do you see Twice Removed doing if it’d come out in 2014?

I think you’d need someone who actually knows what’s going on to answer that question. I think I was totally with what was going on until about 1986, and then it kind of dropped off. (laughs).

I think there are bands that aren’t influenced by us, but I think they’re doing the same thing we were doing back then, which is creating music that’s in love with 60’s and 70’s influences. We loved My Bloody Valentine and Britpop and Nirvana and of course The Beatles.  I don’t think you listen to Twice Removed and think “that’s SO 1994!” I like to think that same record could have come out in 1981. We’ve been trying to bring that same feel to every record we’ve done. We’re just four guys who really love rock and roll.

Catch Sloan on tour this fall across Canada in support of their new album, Commonwealth, out now via Yep Roc Records!