Sloan Brothers
Sloan Brothers – Love & Other Diagnoses – Science Project Records – Fall/Winter 2025“I love love songs. That’s the point of the whole thing,” Sloan Simpson says about Love &
Other Diagnoses (Fall/Winter 2025, Science Project Records), his second album under the name
Sloan Brothers.
The new record follows up the surprise (even for Simpson!) release of 2022’s debut System
Update, which quickly earned critical notice and landed Simpson on the cover of his hometown
weekly paper Flagpole in Athens, Georgia (“From Recordist to Recording Artist”) and later in
the state’s paper of record The Atlanta-Journal Constitution which praised Simpson’s songs
as “stunning” and applauded their “spirit of adventure.”
“When I started doing this, I figured I would put it on Bandcamp… and that would be it,”
Simpson told the paper at the time. The sentiment explains why System Update surprised
Simpson. Even though he grew up playing guitar, he quit after a serious car accident. Instead,
Simpson started documenting the Atlanta music scene through live taping, eventually leading to
a permanent recording setup at the Caledonia Lounge in nearby Athens.
“The reality of losing my favorite venue really set in when I had to go remove the equipment,”
Simpson says of the onset of the pandemic.
While many people taught themselves to make sourdough during lockdown, Simpson taught
himself to make songs. Singing into a microphone for the first time as a forty-something
beginning recording artist, Simpson found he had a talent for songwriting that was validated
when he started calling up the musician friends he had recorded at the Caledonia.
One of Simpson’s many collaborators (which included current and former members of Drive-By
Truckers, Cracker, The Apples In Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, of Montreal, Casper &
The Cookies, Camper Van Beethoven, and Elf Power) on System Update who also appears
throughout Love & Other Diagnoses, is Jay Gonzalez of Drive-By Truckers.
Gonzalez joins Kevin and Matt Lane of The Lanes and Brandon Reynolds of The Arcs to
form the core Sloan Brothers band on the new record. Simpson and Gonzalez also appear on a
four-song split 7-inch, contributing two songs each to “Jay Gonzalez VS Sloan Brothers,” released on April 11, 2025, by Chunklet Industries.
Clearly, fellow musicians love Simpson as much as Simpson loves love.
“At one point, I was describing the record to myself as ’a love song to love songs,’ he says. This
is easily understood when “Gimme Love Songs,” the opening cut from Love & Other
Diagnoses kicks in.
“The album is about honoring the experience of taking part in one of the most central things in
popular music,” Simpson explains. “The love song.”
“I love love songs / They keep me hanging on / To the dream that I can find someone like I
believed when I was young,” Simpson sings on “Gimme Love Songs.” It is a lyric that reveals
more than Simpson may realize. Amidst the overtly catchy earworms on the album (one track
is actually titled “Earworm Song,” i.e., “Your chorus digs in deep when I’m trying to sleep”),
there is a darkness that gives Love & Other Diagnoses its depth.
This album of love songs doesn’t let us escape the pain of love’s hook.
Some of the songs turned out to be more “love-adjacent,” according to Simpson. “Breakup
songs, unrequited love songs… are those still love songs?” he wonders.
Indeed, at track two, cryptically titled “F33.2,” mental health issues appear, which some
listeners may identify with more than the joyful amorous odes elsewhere.
“It’s code from the DSM-V for ‘Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, Severe without Psychotic
Features,’” Simpson explains of the title. Even though it requires explanation, spelling the code
out like that would look even more awkward on an album jacket.
“Plus, ‘F33.2’ rhymes well,” Simpson jokes.
“I looked it up in the DSM after I saw you with him / It says F33.2 / Can’t fall out of love with
you,” he sings on the song, which also gives the album its name: “I’ve got no claim on you / just
some therapy work to do / They figured out what’s wrong with me / Love & other diagnoses.”
Musically, Simpson has said since the beginning of Sloan Brothers that his influences are hard
to pin down. A System Update-era bio wondered, “What if Daft Punk invited Herbie Hancock to
form a trio jamming with The Grateful Dead?” an idea imagined before Simpson recently
mentioned that he “once listened to The Grateful Dead’s entire Europe ’72 tour – all 73 CDs of
it.”
Listeners may also hear the early days of seminal Hoboken-based indie record label Bar/None
Records, which first gave the world fellow Athens band The Glands, along with They Might Be
Giants and Yo La Tengo.
Like the traditional nature of the subject matter on Love & Other Diagnoses, Simpson defers to
the basics, naming The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Cure, and The
Apples In Stereo (band leader Robert Schneider is a friend and frequent collaborator with
Simpson.)
Hear what you will, but Simpson’s main influence on the new record isn’t in dispute.
“Most of these songs are nothing unusual from the lyric side for love songs,” he says. “That’s the
point: it’s my take on the tradition. A variant on something all songwriters do; now it’s my turn.”
Love & Other Diagnoses, the second album from Sloan Brothers, arrives Fall/Winter 2025 from
Science Project Records.
Photo: Mike White