Thursday, May 16, 2013

Hardcore

I know you guys know that Sloan just released a brand new single, a hardcore single.  And I totally got one.

They went on sale at 12pm EST on April 30th, and luckily I didn't work that day so I was parked in front of the computer waiting to get mine.  I went on just after ten and picked up the package deal with 7" single, t-shirt and digital downloads.


The single cover bears a striking resemblance to Minor Threat's Salad Days EP cover.  Although, in the Minor Threat picture the one dude is sitting on a wooden Pepsi crate, while in the Sloan version Chris is sitting on a wooden Coca-Cola crate. 


The single is hand numbered and limited to only 500, but if you wanted one and didn't get one, too bad because they sold out pretty quick.  The A side, Jenny, is written by Chris and the B side, It's In You, It's In Me, is written by Patrick.  Both songs are good, but I think Jenny is the bettter "hardcore" song.  Patrick's song still sounds very Sloan-y, just a little rougher.  If you head over to Sloanmusic.com you can listen to both songs and decide for yourself.


They also made a limited edition t-shirt just for this package that has a collage of all the band members circa 1985.  I was wearing mine yesterday...cuz I'm hardcore.

The package also came with a digital download of the single plus an entire 12 song hardcore covers album.  Sloan covers songs from Angry Samoans, Minor Threat, Black Flag, 7 Seconds, Bad Religion, and more.  It's cool to hear them play something different, but I wonder how Jay felt about all this.  He doesn't seem the "hardcore" type, even though he sings on one of the covers.


I burned the single plus the covers album to a CD to put in my car, but I almost listened to the entire thing before I got to where I was going.  All 14 tracks add up for a run time of 22 minutes and 15 seconds.  Hooray for hardcore and punk music!

I thought it was cool of Sloan to do this hardcore single and throw in an album of covers as well.  I liked it, even if it doesn't sound like Sloan.  I wonder if they will be doing this again in other styles like country or rap?  Count me in for a rap single and covers album, but I'll pass on a country one.  I bet Jay would love to do a country single.

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