https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkN_qkN5JLQ
Glenn McDonald, in one sentence, described Sloan's debut single "Underwhelmed" more accurately than I can improve on: it sounds like Ozzy Osbourne and band covering a lost They Might Be Giants song. Depending on your mental image of TMBG, if you have one, that could be deceptive: they have their educational songs ("James K. Polk", "Mammal") and their absurdist songs ("Hall of Heads", "the Guitar") and their gleefully petulant children's sing-alongs ("I Should Be Allowed to Think", "Boss of Me"), none of which he or I are referencing directly. But They Might Be Giants also have a romantic streak that leads, in some of their greatest songs, to the kind of relationship and/or character portraits that an over-educated, absurdist, self-awarely petulant romantic might write ("She's an Angel", "Ana Ng", "They'll Need a Crane", "Sleeping in the Flowers").
Sloan's public emergence came on the college-rock circuit in 1992 or 1993, depending where you live, either of which was in the post-Nirvana period of mandatory loud distorted guitars; but the Chris Murphy-penned "Underwhelmed" is exactly that TMBG sort of relationship song.