Sloan Return On The Charts

After more than 15 years of recording and releasing well-crafted and generally palatable albums, Sloan are true veterans of the Canadian college radio scene. While their peak popularity among campus programmers came a dozen years ago with One Chord To Another, which was the first album to blast past the 20-week period on the top 50 chart, their star status has waned over their last four studio albums. Between The Bridges charted for 13 weeks in the fall of 1999 after debuting at #16 and peaking for several weeks at #2. Pretty Together had a 10-week run in 2001, the shortest span for a Sloan album since the top 50 chart went weekly in 1996. It debuted at #9 and peaked at #2 the next week. Action Pact lasted 15 weeks on the chart in 2003, debuting at #17 and peaking at #9 four weeks later. Never Hear The End of It lasted just one week in the top 50, debuting at #35 two months after its release. With Parallel Play's debut at #9 this week, Sloan have matched their highest first-week ranking. Time will tell if the album will still be around in three months.

Looking farther up the chart, Islands' Arm's Way remains at #1 for a fifth consecutive week. The latest contenders looking to knock them off their throne are fellow Montreal band Wolf Parade, whose At Mount Zoomer rockets into the top 50 at #2. This makes it this week's highest debut and the hands-down winner of the Chart Sizzler Award. At Mount Zoomer is the highest debut on the chart this year, beating out Cat Power's Jukebox #3 entry in February. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's Lie Down In The Light remains at #3, while Tokyo Police Club's Elephant Shell drops two spots to #4. The Wet Secrets' Rock Fantasy slips a notch to #5, while the self-titled release from Women hops up 22 places to #6. No Age's Nouns rises a spot back to #7, where it has sat for four of the last five weeks. The eponymous release by Fleet Foxes drops a place to #8. As mentioned earlier, Sloan's Parallel Play arrives at #9, while Dubmatix's Renegade Rocker jumps 11 places to grab the #10 position.

Other noteworthy new entries include Ayla Brook's After The Morning After at #21, My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges at #34, Emmylou Harris' All I Intended To Be at #36 and The Ting Tings' We Started Nothing at #49.

Not much has changed on the five specialty charts, as fewer and fewer contributors compiled or changed charts this week. Atmosphere's When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold has remained at #1 on the Hip-Hop chart for five weeks, Elizabeth Shepherd's Parkdale returns as #1 on the Jazz/Blues chart for a second week and Orchestra Baobab's Made In Dakar has held the top spot on the World/Folk chart since its #1 debut four weeks ago. After a week's absence, Matmos' Supreme Balloon retakes the #1 position on the Electronic top 10. The only really new #1 is on the Metal/Punk chart, where Opeth's Watershed sat at #2 last week.

Cadence Weapon's Afterparty Babies sits at #8 in its 19th week on the Hip-Hop chart, while Crystal Castles' self-titled album is also at #8 on the Electronic chart in its 15th week. There were four new entries on the World/Folk chart, with Seun Kuti & Fela's Egypt 80's self-titled release debuting at #6. This massive 25-piece Afro-beat band will play the Sirius Stage at Toronto's Harbourfront on Wednesday night for free.