Based on the Best Seller

Maybe it was a coincidence that Sloan announced their 14th album in June 2025 with a jubilant group-hug sing-along—“Live Forever”—that shares its name with a certain Oasis classic, right at a time when the Gallaghers were about to embark on their reunion tour blitz. And perhaps it was Sloan’s cheeky way of acknowledging that they have indeed been doing this forever (or 35 years, at least) without pause, resurfacing every two to three years with a fresh batch of power-pop whoppers that effortlessly hit the sweet spot between ’60s psych melody and ’70s hard-rock muscle. Like its immediate predecessors (2018’s <i>12</i> and 2022’s <i>Steady</i>), <i>Based on the Best Seller</i> is a 12-song set whose airtight execution can obscure the vast aesthetic terrain covered by the band’s four songwriters, be it Patrick Pentland’s switchblade-glam stomper “So Far Down”, Chris Murphy’s <i>Pet Sounds</i> pastiche “Fortune Teller”, Jay Ferguson’s countrified charmer “Collect Yourself” or Andrew Scott’s acid-fried rocker “No Damn Fears”. As Murphy sings on the aforementioned “Live Forever”, “The ’90s nostalgia that you feel is nothing compared to what’s to come,” and <i>Based on the Best Seller</i> adds another exciting new chapter to Canadian rock’s greatest never-ending story.