There aren't any real surprises on 4 Nights... -- it's a straightforward warts-and-all double live album recorded during the band's four-night stand at the titular Toronto venue. There aren't any crazy covers or any shockingly iconoclastic reworkings of your favorites from the Sloan catalog...and that's fine, because a live album isn't the place to experiment. So rather than fiddling around, Sloan settle down to play the majority of the songs from Navy Blues, One Chord to Another and the oft-neglected Twice Removed, as well as the most obvious choices from Smeared. It's clear that the Sloan guys have spotless rock-music pedigrees, as all the essential points of the best arena-rock live albums are covered -- amusing moments of audience participation, band banter (my favorite being the amusing "Are you ready to rock?" exchange between Chris Murphy and Patrick Pentland on "G Turns to D") and, of course, a jam-intensive, solo-heavy, get-the-audience-chanting peak (in this case "Money City Maniacs" and "Deeper than Beauty"). More than anything else, 4 Nights at the Palais Royale reveals Sloan as a band at the top of their game, playing straightforward rock songs in a straightforward manner; you get the feeling that they'd be as comfortable and assured playing on a street corner as they are on stage. If Sloan eventually find the worldwide success they deserve, this could be -- gulp -- the Live at Budokan or Frampton Comes Alive for the new millennium. And no, I don't mean you'll find it at every garage and car boot sale on earth.