Recording: Sloan

Artist: Sloan

Song: Everything You've Done Wrong

Recorded at The Great Hall, December 21, 2011.

Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong

Full review to follow. A fundraiser organized by Fucked Up to benefit Barriere Lake Legal Defense Fund & COUNTERfit Harm Reduction Services featured excellent sets throughout, but headliners Sloan — playing One Chord to Another in its entirety — also packed an unexpected emotional punch.

I think it'd be fair to say that I listened to that album as much as I listened to anything in 1996, and even if it's been a decade since I've heard it, so much of it was branded into me. '96 was a transitional year, and I have vivid memories of listening to that album on a dubbed cassette in a battery-powered boombox in the cab of the U-Haul that was taking me to Toronto. Hearing the songs brought back those days with an unexpected sharpness, and evoked a weird, ebullient sadness as it also dredged up with heavy immediacy Some Troubles I Had.

But still, the best of the music's uplift is also part of the psychic residue and as I looked around at friends and acquaintances — Anyone Who's Anyone was there — it was hard to feel more bothered with queasy nostalgia than lifted up a bit in the moment.