Sloan’s Andrew Scott Believes In: Liking When His Neighbor Tony Goes Back To Portugal Every Summer

The 10th record (not including two EPs, a live album and a “greatest hits” collection) from stalwart Toronto band Sloan, The Double Cross (just released on Yep Roc) also serves to commemorate the quartet’s 20th anniversary as a versatile guitar-pop collective. Guitarists Patrick Pentland and Jay Ferguson, bassist Chris Murphy and drummer Andrew Scott—all four write and sing their own tunes and often switch instruments onstage—have successfully forged a productive two-decade career full of preternaturally catchy songs and beyond-entertaining live shows. Thankfully, they don’t appear to be slowing down; The Double Cross continues the group’s winning streak, particularly the seamless opening 1-2-3 of Murphy’s “Follow The Leader,” Ferguson’s “The Answer Was You” and Pentland’s “Unkind.” (Check out the band’s YouTube channel for a track-by-track discussion of the LP.) In their typically all-for-one, one-for-all fashion, the members of Sloan are guest-editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our brand new Q&A with Pentland.

Scott: I like it when my neighbor Tony goes back to Portugal every summer. I like the solitude that follows his departure, which is inevitably a yelling festival betwixt husband, wife, daughter (I feel very bad for her) and mother-in-law. Tony is the kind of person who doesn’t think anything he doesn’t yell. I like not having to view his under-bitten, tight indignation at the world and feel his proud, rural disregard for anyone else around him. I like it when the remains of noxious fumes and debris he leaves behind like the slime trail of a large slug aren’t as evident as when he’s present. I like it when his leaf blower jams and fails to perform to his exacting standards of creating noise and pollution, especially when it is a really windy morning. I like dreaming up ways to drive him crazy. I like thinking of methods to undermine his every move. I like the notion of a massive tree crashing vertically through the interlocking brick sarcophagus that is his front yard. Or his tomb to be; I can’t quite figure it. I dislike this person with such a visceral passion that I even wrote a song about him once. See if you can guess which one.

I don’t want to ever glorify or celebrate a neighborly dysfunction like this one because, sadly, I’m a part of this unfortunate human-relations equation myself. I’m obligated to teach my kids ways to mend fences, not further their decline, right? I do go to great lengths to do just that: teach and practice love, not war; we can work it out; love thy neighbor. All that. With Tony, it’s all in vain. He has been sent by demons to test me, and test he does. Maybe he’s a brilliant scientist, and I just don’t understand him and his field. That can’t be it. He’s a formidable opponent, that’s for sure. But look, it’s almost summer! Soon he will return to the mothership. But not without leaving something behind for everyone around him to know that he will return. He’ll leave the air conditioner on full to keep the house nice and cool while no one resides there for weeks, just in case it gets too hot while he’s away.

I’m not perfect. Not by a long shot, and perhaps to those around me, I represent the same Olympic inconsideration as he does. But I try to coexist in close urban quarters with a modicum solicitude and thoughtfulness. Sometimes we all slip. I know that we are all mirrors of ourselves and that what we dislike in someone else actually depicts something we don’t like about ourselves. So the less time I spend in front of the Tony mirror the better.