Like most conversations, a phone call with Sloan’s Chris Murphy starts with the most inane of small-talk questions: How are you?
“I’m well – but you mean after having been hit by a car or whatever?” he says slyly.
Yuk it up, but Murphy did in fact get run over by a car. It was this past July, so he’s had some time to recover – plus release a new EP, Hit & Run (yes, he says it’s named after the accident, though not based on it), and announce a winter tour (see dates below) – but he was willing to relive the horror for the purposes of this article.
“I went out for the first time in a million years,” begins Murphy, who’s currently in “baby land” as the father of a two-year-old.
After spending the night out at Toronto pub the Magpie – catching up with friends and watching his Sloan bandmate, Jay Ferguson, DJ -- Murphy hopped on his bike for the ride home. “And as soon as I get out of the door to leave, I get hit by a car.”
“It basically looked like I was dead,” says Murphy. “I was unconscious; there were people trying to revive me.”
Murphy’s bandmate, Ferguson, saw the accident, “but he didn’t know it was me,” Murphy explains. “He called 911 and came over to see who it was, basically, and saw my sneakers and fucking shit his pants,” says Murphy, clarifying with a chuckle, “well, he didn’t shit his pants, but anyway, he had a hard time.”
“Jay, the little hero, he came straight to the hospital. He got in the ambulance with me, so he was there when I woke up, terrified that I was paralyzed or something. But God love him, he stayed with me and as soon as I could feel my fingers and toes, I was starting up the comedy routine to keep him from losing his mind.”
Right on cue, Murphy offers his jokey theory for the mystery driver who mowed him down: “I knew basically everybody there, so one of my first omigod-I’m-not-dead thoughts was, ‘I wonder if it was somebody I knew…I wonder if it was Peter Elkas,” he cracks.
While his sense of humour came out unscathed, Murphy says the accident broke his collarbone in half. “It was snapped so severely it was like an x, two points coming out to my skin,” which, incidentally, makes it tricky – nevermind painful – to play the bass. He’s since had surgery, and says he’s “feeling pretty strong, but it’s a drag because literally there’s a piece of metal that sticks out right where my guitar strap goes. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.”
And while the hit and run forced the band to scrap a few shows this past summer, they were back on stage within weeks – recruiting Taylor Knox (The Golden Dogs) and Kevin Hilliard (Small Sins) to play bass and drums for Murphy. “We did some shows where I just ran around like a goofball with a sling, just singing a quarter of the songs and standing around like Flava Flav the rest of the time.”
Nor did the accident affect the making of the new EP – considering Murphy says most of the work was wrapped before he wound up unconscious on Dundas Street. (He finished recording vocals, he says, the afternoon before the accident.)
The EP’s five songs whip by in 13 pop minutes (maybe that Hit & Run title is apt, after all). Murphy’s “Take it Upon Yourself” (now available for free on the band’s website) is a hand-clapping pop anthem that you’d think was written post-accident (it wasn’t), considering its pick-yourself-up-from-the-bootstraps theme. “Midnight Mass,” Ferguson’s contribution, is a more muted, minor-key affair featuring jangly acoustic guitar, flute, gauzy choir vocals and a general Peter and Gordon vibe. Patrick Pentland’s “It is Never” pushes the disc in a rock ‘n’ roll direction, with it’s smouldering, psychedelic outro that leads us into Andrew Scott’s “Where Are You Now?” – something of an imaginary AC/DC b-side, full of crotch-rock swagger and shouts. The closing tune, Murphy’s “Oh Dear Diary,” is possibly the finest of the bunch, a twee tune in the vein of Spoon, featuring a meandering bassline as delicious as the melody, and an organ riff that would be right at home on a Wes Anderson soundtrack.
Available as a digital download only, Murphy says he’d originally hoped to have Hit & Run out in September. “I thought that it would be quite quick and cheap and easy, and it was none of those things,” he says with a laugh.
“Manufacturing is such a huge pain in the ass, and it’s a huge money risk too. It’s like, how many should we make? Should we make 10,000 or should we make 1,000, do you know what I mean? Our rehearsal space, it’s sound-insulated with tons of unsold records, from records past – especially our famous white elephant, our live record from 1999 [4 Nights at the Palais Royale]. We have a couple thousand of those or something.”
“My plan was let’s do this EP, we’ll do another in a couple months. If it sells well, maybe we won’t do CDs, but make a 12-inch vinyl, at least. Maybe that’s just the way we’ll do it.”
All of these plans for the digital EP were laid months before Murphy experienced an actual hit and run, he says. “So, why are we calling it [Hit & Run] if it’s not based on it?” he asks, jokingly. “My ideas are never so much ideas, they’re essentially elaborate puns.”
Hit & Run is available now at www.sloanmusic.com
Sloan’s Canadian tour dates include:
Dec. 9, Winnipeg
Dec. 10, Saskatoon
Dec. 11, Calgary
Dec. 12, Edmonton
Dec. 15, Vancouver
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