Track Listing

1. Adrift
2. Bank Job
3. Sound of Your Voice
4. Easy
5. Home
6. Bull in a China Shop
7. Everything Had Changed
8. Peterborough and the Kawarthas
9. Maybe You're Right
10. Take It Back
11. Vanishing
12. Rule the World with Love
13. Wind It Up

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9836 in Music
• Released on: 2006-09-12
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
Barenaked Ladies Are Me still exudes the band's sense of fun while musically and lyrically demonstrating a maturity you'd expect from guys who have played together forever.

Amazon.com
15+ years after their winsome indie debut, Canada's Barenaked Ladies come full circle here, dropping off the major label merry-go-round to re-embrace a DYI sensibility with typically breezy aplomb. But, as this collection's strong songs and crisp production attest, that hardly means the band didn't learn a thing or three during its successful tenure in the majors. The gorgeous melancholy of "Adrift" is apt preamble to a collection that's more thematically balanced and graced by an expansive sense of artistic democracy. While mainstays Steven Page and Ed Robertson contribute such patently torqued, BNL-mirthful fare as "Bank Job," "Bull in a China Shop," "Rule the World With Love" and "Wind It Up," there's a growing maturity and sense of reflection in their work as well, as evidenced by Page confessing his own emotional disconnection via the evocative, banjo-accordion lament "Everything Had Changed." But it's the strong, equally literate contributions of fellow band members Jim Creeggan ("Peterborough & the Kawathas") and Kevin Hearn ("Sound of Your Voice," "Vanishing") that truly expand BNL's horizons at a career juncture when many bands are all too happy to rest on their laurels or hew religiously to the formula that garnered them. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Much closer to Maroon than Stunt
The sticker on the plastic likens Barenaked Ladies are Me, but the closest comparison I can make is to Maroon. Definitely a shift from the moody Alternative of Everything to Everyone, this latest release is, nearly entirely, upbeat Adult Contemporary (as if these labels have any meaning). Seriously--this album is so upbeat, I think there's a good chance I was skipping as I walked down the street, earbuds in my ears.

Think: "Too Little Too Late," "The Humor of the Situation," "Go Home" and "Humor of the Situation." Now imagine it tighter. With much more elaborate arrangements (seriously, they didn't even use this many instruments on Gordon--there were times when I was wondering whether I was listening to BNL or Sufjan Stevens).

The lyrics are classic BNL (with "Bank Job" on par with "Another Postcard"--it's a good song when you don't hear it 20 times a day--in terms of off-beat humor). I've been told this album was more of a collaborative writing effort. I'll take my source's word for it.

Highlights: "Easy" and "Wind it Up" (from the EP), "Maybe You're Right" and "Bull in a China Shop."

Also of note: Kevin Hearn gets to sing! I know of no other time I've heard his voice except "Hidden Sun" (again, on Maroon).

Their smoothest flowing album yet
The new album is probably their most consistent album they've made. The songs flow into each other wonderfully; nothing on the album is a jarring departure from the overall theme. While it lacks the darker edge of "Everything to Everyone," the album instead focuses on the nostalgic and pleasant. It features the trademark wit the band is known for, but it's much more subtle. While it doesn't have the boundless energy of "Gordon" or the pop sound of "Stunt," it is an album that demands to be listened to from beginning to end.

Growing Older Doesn't Mean Growing Dull
"Some stupid number one hit single has got me in this mess!" The line from Barenaked Ladies' debut album, Gordon, proved prescient for the band following the success of "One Week" from their 1998 smash Stunt. The band had always crafted a whimsical blend of the somber and the comedic, yet they had garnered notoriety mostly for their humorous work, and the frenetic, pop culture-referencing song only further established them as a clever but glib band in the minds of critics and the general public.

Set on surmounting the novelty band stigma, the Ladies toned down their customary quirkiness a bit on their next two albums--Maroon (2000) and Everything to Everyone (2003). However, Reprise sought to capitalize on more rapid-rhyming singles, releasing "Pinch Me" and "Another Postcard" as lead singles for the albums. "Pinch Me" reached #15 on the Hot 100 and Maroon went platinum, but the downright inane "Another Postcard" received little airplay, and Everything to Everyone sold poorly. Disappointed with Reprise's promotional support (or lack thereof), the band left their long-time label in 2004 to form Desperation Records.

The common critical assessment of the band's new album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, is that it's BNL's first "mature" album. Although such an assessment shows some critics' relative ignorance of Barenaked Ladies' entire work as well as an apparent forgetfulness of their own work (many writers hailed Maroon and Everything to Everyone as the band's "mature" albums), it's fair to say that a serious tone pervades the album. On songs like the acoustic-driven first single, "Easy," and the buoyant, sing-along-inducing "Bull in a China Shop," long-time songwriting partners Steven Page and Ed Roberston explore the familiar BNL themes of self-doubt and relationship complexities. Elsewhere the duo sharpen the political commentary that emerged on Everything to Everyone. The strongest of the politically-minded tracks (and perhaps the strongest song on the entire album) is "Maybe You're Right," which builds from sparse instrumentation to a resounding brass-filled finale. The album isn't devoid of BNL's trademark humor, though. On "Bank Job," a quirky waltz that could be the premise for a Cohen brothers' film, Robertson sings of a heist stymied by one of the robber's "crisis of conscience" when the bank is full of nuns. And, on "Wind It Up," the album's southern-rock closer, Robertson delivers possibly the funniest line of the album: "I was a baby when I learned to suck/But you have raised it to an art form."

Keyboardist Kevin Hearn and bassist Jim Creeggan also contribute some songwriting, with Hearn penning the Queen-esque "Sound of Your Voice" (sung by Page) and "Vanishing," and Creeggan providing "Peterborough and the Kawarthas." Hearn's songwriting contributions, including two other tracks on the deluxe edition, are his most prolific with the band, but his soft, colorless vocals are an acquired taste.

Despite many fans welcoming the band's continuing departure from fallacious ditties (No songs about postcards with chimps? Hallelujah!), some prefer early-era BNL (Gordon to be specific) and will no doubt be disappointed with the scarcity of BNL's customary hyperactivity. Of the thirteen tracks, only a handful could really be considered "peppy." Given that the band had written plenty of uptemo songs during the recording sessions--songs like "Running Out of Ink," "Down to Earth," and "Maybe Not," all of which are available on the deluxe edition of the album--one has to assume BNL consciously pursued a mellow vibe. The album doesn't really hit toe-tapping territory until the third song, "Sound of Your Voice," and two songs--the opening track "Adrift" and "Vanishing--are peaceful to the point of being downright somniferous.

Even though the album could use the jolt a song like "Running Out of Ink" would provide, the bulk of the material is by no means dull. The music is the sound of five guys who clearly enjoy the new-found freedom of making music on their own terms. BNL's greatest strength has always been their songwriting, and the album shows Page, Robertson, and Co. returning to form after the uneven Everything to Everyone. Barenaked Ladies Are Me not only surpasses its predecessor but also stands among the best work of the band's career.