BARENAKED LADIES: BARENAKED LADIES ARE ME (2006)
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 Kavarthas; 9) Maybe You're Right; 10) Take
It Back; 11) Vanishing; 12) Rule The World With Love; 13) Wind It Up.
Every once in a while, the world needs to be
reminded of that old adage — «quantity does not equal quality» (said the
Turkish sultan, ordering his ninety-nine brothers to be put to death). For that
very reason, the Barenaked Ladies held a historical recording session in early
2005, where they came up with no fewer than 30 original compositions — an
impressive pile that took a further year and a half to finalize, sort out, and
release in several variants, eventually settling upon the «white album» and «whiter
album» recipe that The Beatles never followed: Barenaked Ladies Are Me, with 13 songs on it, came out in September
2006, and Barenaked Ladies Are Men,
containing the rest, followed half a year later.
Had these guys been songwriting geniuses, the
story would be truly intriguing. Had these guys displayed their trademark «quirky»
behavior and sarcasm, there would be some hope. What happened instead can only
be called a blundering catastrophe: apparently, they went into the studio with the
solemn goal of writing a shitpile of deadly serious, «thinking-man-introspective-singer-songwriter»
pop songs, almost completely bereft of any sense of humor or lightness of
approach — or clever hooks, for that matter.
It is not even a question of monotonousness:
formally, Barenaked Ladies Are Me is
fairly diverse, mixing acoustic folk-pop, electric power-pop, art-pop,
alt-rock, bits of electronica, bluegrass, etc., in other words, touching upon
all sorts of familiar ground that the Ladies had already covered previously,
but wouldn't mind shuffling together one more time. And yet, simultaneously, it
all sounds thoroughly tedious, mind-numbing, and sort of gooey, taking the
stagnation of Everything To Everyone
to a whole new level.
The few songs that are pinned to loud electric
riffage can be seen as relieving exceptions. The best of the lot is probably
ʽWind It Upʼ — why it happens to close the album rather than opening it with
its bulgy, almost Townshend-ian punch, is way beyond my limited comprehension. Of
course, it does not have much to recommend it other than that swirling riff (as
well as a monster psychedelic guitar solo from guest star Kim Mitchell), but a
good riff and a good solo is the bare
minimum required from a decent power-pop tune. Another good one is Kevin
Hearn's ʽSound Of Your Voiceʼ, whose garage-influenced lead melody spends most
of the time battling against the slower, blues-shuffle-style rhythm section.
And both of these songs were singles, all
right, but for some reason, the lead
single was ʽEasyʼ — a song that stands much closer in spirit to the somnambulistic
bulk of the album. Like many of the Ladies' songs, it is a potentially good number — but in this case, it would have probably
realized its potential much better, had it been handed over to U2. Listen to
it, then try to imagine the Edge's echoey style instead of the wimpy acoustic foundation
used over here, and Bono wailing "make it easy, make it easy" instead
of Robertson. Now that could have
been something; this version,
compared with the imaginary ideal, sounds like a first-stage demo.
And the same applies to more than half of these
songs. The ballads are smooth and mushy (ʽAdriftʼ, ʽHomeʼ), the electronics are
underdeveloped (ʽBank Jobʼ starts out with bleeps and beeps that still end up
chewed up and swallowed by generic alt-rock guitars), and even some of the
fast, supposedly energetic pop-rock numbers are thoroughly devoid of creative
ideas (ʽBull In A China Shopʼ — ʽBottle Of Diet Poisonʼ would have been a
better title, if they really needed a suitable «tired old metaphor» to pick
from the song's lyrics). Worst of the lot might be Creeggan's ambitiously
titled ʽPeterborough And The Kawarthasʼ — a neo-folk concoction that has no
dynamics whatsoever; I would have trouble recommending it as elevator muzak.
In short, we are «reborn on a pirate ship» here
— once again, the Ladies are offering us serious intellectual pop music,
forgetting that even serious intellectual pop music has to address the emotional
centers in order to succeed. Besides, it's not even all that intellectual: a
song like ʽMaybe You're Rightʼ, with its supposedly «deep» chorus of
"shall I take back everything I've ever said / and live my whole life in
silence instead?", hardly suffices to make the Ladies into respectable social
spokesmen for their, or any other, generation.
Had this been a «simple pop» album, it would
have been just mediocre. But it is not — the Ladies' acute desire to release everything they came up with, in two
subsequent installments; and their equally acute desire to be judged as Serious
Singer-Songwriters rather than monkee entertainers intentionally push the
plank higher than necessary. And since, the way I see it, nothing makes me hate
an album more than «inadequacy of intention», Barenaked Ladies Are Me is a certified thumbs down. One more time in
its stubbornly frustrating career, the band simply tries to bite off more than
it can chew — or, to be more precise, bites off something that is genetically
incompatible with its digestive system.
Check "Barenaked Ladies Are Me" (MP3) on Amazon
These guys lost me at "but not a real fur coat, that's cruel", lol.
ReplyDeleteWhat a disaster. Everything To Everyone found the band entering middle age while retaining their quirky side to an extent, and the production was lively enough and songs memorable enough for it to be a solid record. This album on the other hand, just drops nearly *everything* that I like about the band. The production is boring, the lyrics are boring, the singing and playing is boring and the songs in general are boring! I've had this album ever since it was released and there are still tracks on here where I can't in the slightest recall how they go, even while looking at the lyric sheet.
ReplyDeleteNot every song is terrible, I like Wind It Up, and Sound Of Your Voice (definitely the best track here) a decent amount and Adrift and Bank Job are OK (though that might just be because they come first). But none of those touch any of the highlights on previous BNL albums. Some other tracks are almost OK, I could see Maybe You're Right and Bull In A China Shop being pretty good with some serious reworking, but they still just barely qualify as mediocre here.
Releasing it in two chunks was probably a good idea since it's difficult enough to get through 13 songs of Are Me in a row, it would be doubly painful if this was twice as long. On the other hand they forced their fans to buy two boring albums instead of just one. The two discs of music could have been whittled down to just the highlights making for a much better album. But that wouldn't fix the general blandness everything is covered in.
Are Men has more highlights on it than Are Me IMO so for that reason I would have to consider Are Me to be the worst BNL album there is. It's just utterly devoid of anything interesting. Bleh.
This album took a long time to grow on me, and Peterborough is my favorite track. Are Men had the opposite effect one me. I loved it at first, then I grew more tired of it.
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