E-Mail This Article to a Friend Teenage fan club The cult of power-poppers Sloan BY HUA HSU

You don’t truly understand pop music until you’ve joined a fan club. It gives shape to the yearning for community, the simultaneous love and hate you have for the girls shout-singing obscure songs louder than the band members, and the feeling that Song X was written for you, and that by understanding Song X, somebody might gain access to the unmapped complexities of your soul. It isn’t the article of worship that teaches you anything; it’s the act of devotion and the thoroughness of your appreciation. It is what you do with your love.

Halifax’s Sloan are a band who inspire such feelings. Although they’ve never had a legitimate hit, their followers constitute a sizable cult, they play to sold-out clubs, and their activities have been monitored on the Internet since the days of long e-mail addresses. The odd thing is that there is very little to get about Sloan — no complicated lyrics begging for explication. Over the past 13 years, they’ve sublimated a steady stream of obvious influences (Sonic Youth, the Beatles, Kiss) into a sound that’s all hooks and clever, love-struck lyrics. They’re derivative — and absolutely great at it, something that doesn’t immediately come across on their recent singles collection, A-Sides Win (Koch).

The evolutionary crawl of Sloan is buried deep in their albums. The self-released 1992 Peppermint EP was recorded under the haze of Nirvana, a mischievous mismatching of sludgy riffs and pop melodies. The band signed with Geffen and the following year released their beautifully messy debut album, Smeared. The lead single, "Underwhelmed," summarized the mission: Sonic Youth’s mayhem reduced to free play, My Bloody Valentine without all the nightmarish bits, and the difficulties of love posed as a series of riddles. And they were something of a democracy: each member — guitarists Jay Ferguson and Patrick Pentland, bassist Chris Murphy, and drummer Andrew Scott — had his own songs and vocal solos, and during live shows, the microphone was passed like a hot potato. The luscious duet "I Am the Cancer" and the wispy ballad "What’s There To Decide?" suggested there was a diversity to their sound underneath all that feedback. (Neither track appears on the compilation.)

The minor buzz of Smeared had people thinking Halifax. A Sub Pop EP highlighted the local noise-pop scene, and Sloan’s own label, Murder, released a string of great records from their friends. (The most sought-after Murder items are two 1994 releases from MC Stinkin’ Rich, who would rename himself Buck 65.) Some suggested this tiny Nova Scotia outpost could be the next Seattle, whatever that meant. Sloan’s second album, Twice Removed, was released in 1994 and was heralded as one of the year’s "Best Albums You Didn’t Hear" by Spin and "Best Canadian Album of All Time" by Canada’s Chart magazine. It barely dented the US. The band’s singles ("Coax Me" and "People of the Sky" are included) don’t quite give you the long view. It’s album cuts like "Bells On," "Before I Do," and "I Can Feel It" that stretch their harmonies out and foreshadow heartache; they’re the haunted echoes of the singles’ unrepentant glee.

After a brief sabbatical, Sloan re-formed for 1996’s One Chord to Another, an addictive, hooky triumph. The band became heroes in Canada and came to terms with the modesty of their stateside fame. Over their next four albums — Navy Blues (1998), Between the Bridges (1999), Pretty Together (2001), and Action Pact (2003) — their sound got heavier as they draped their four-part harmonies in riffs nicked from AC/DC and Kiss. Half of A-Sides comes from these air-guitar-friendly albums, including the arena histrionics of "If It Feels Good" and the playful boogie of "She Says What She Means."

A-Sides collects enough catchy hits to explain why people buy Sloan’s records. What it doesn’t explain is why they’re so adored. These guys are fans, just like the rest of us. Appreciation of Consolidated is scrutinized in "Coax Me"; "The Lines You Amend" pays tribute to Ringo Starr’s "Photograph." Some numbers do homage note by note; others simply evoke familiar moods and auras. Sloan don’t just write songs about pop subjects like girls, dreams, and dreams about girls; they write songs about what it means to live under the spell of pop, to understand the world through B-sides. And these are songs encoded with their own devotions, captained by their own faiths.

Sloan perform this Wednesday, June 15, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square; call (617) 492-BEAR.