Sloan’s new record, the group’s 11th, hits stores on September 9 and finds the Canadian rock icons attempting to break their own individualistic mold. While Sloan has long worked democratically, with each of the band’s four members contributing songs to each record and with the members all having equal say in what makes it and what doesn’t, Commonwealth, the band’s new record, really ups the ante on that front, assigning each band member a single side of a double LP. That motif plays out through four playing card suits, as well as through the specter of the band’s collective work.
Below, A.V. Club readers are getting an exclusive first listen to “Cleopatra,” the group’s latest single. The track is swooping power pop that songwriter Jay “Diamond” Ferguson says is “a widescreen, panoramic, cross generational love song about three women” that’ll hopefully enter “the pantheon shared by ‘King Midas In Reverse,’ “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” and “Alley Oop.”