Navy Blues

Within the first few cuts on their fifth release, Canada's Sloan again transcend the power-pop tag with a tune called "Iggy & Angus" that sounds more like "Itchycoo Park"-era Small Faces than either the Stooges or AC/DC, a Beach Boys-style epic ("Sinking Ships," which gives Navy Blues its title), and "She Says What She Means," a bazooka-rock stomper that recalls the best of Sweet. From those early highlights, the group continues its happily eclectic borrowing with a felicitous touch that puts the disc within shouting distance of plunderrific classics like Nick Lowe's Pure Pop for Now People and the Pooh Sticks's Great White Wonder. And their what-did-they-just-say? lyrics, which improve on the previous One Chord to Another's, push Navy Blues further into the realm of the gleefully subversive. --Rickey Wright