For many artists, the word “steady” might seem like a backhanded compliment, but Sloan wears it like a badge of honour. After all, how many other rock bands have survived for three decades and 13 albums with their original lineup intact? And what other band can lay claim to four equally industrious songwriters who are still working at the top of their game? Steady wastes no time reasserting Sloan’s undiminished vitality with “Magical Thinking,” a shot of post-punky power pop that piles the band’s candy-coated harmonies atop a taut, wiry backbeat. That sort of lean economy proves to be Steady’s defining quality, even as it showcases each member’s distinct personality. While Chris Murphy’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It” boasts all jangly of joy a ’66 Beatles A-side and Jay Ferguson makes like a New Wave George Harrison on “Dream It All Over Again,” Patrick Pentland’s gut-punching “Scratch the Surface” suggests Sloan isn’t so much the Canadian Fab Four as the alt-rock April Wine. And of course, it wouldn’t be a proper Sloan album without some curveballs tossed by wild-card drummer Andrew Scott, who penned the cosmic-country reveries “Panic on Runnymede” and “Close Encounters.”