BARENAKED LADIES: BARENAKED LADIES ARE MEN (2007)
1) Serendipity; 2) Something
You'll Never Find; 3) One And Only; 4) Angry People; 5) Down To Earth; 6)
Beautiful; 7) Running Out Of Ink; 8) Half A Heart; 9) Maybe Not; 10) I Can, I
Will, I Do; 11) Fun & Games; 12) The New Sad; 13) Quality; 14) Another
Spin; 15) What A Letdown.
The Ladies gave the green light to the release
of the rest of the songs they had recorded during the 2005-2006 sessions so
quickly that it was quite clear — the two records do not relate to each other
in a «main product / outtakes & leftovers» kind of way, but are actually
two equal-rights parts of one whole. Which is, really, the only way to explain
that Are Men is a significant improvement
over Are Me, much to the consolation
of those (like me) who were expecting to hear something even more dreadfully
dull and languid than the first part.
The general difference is that Are Me focuses on the slower,
«rootsier», more intimate / sentimental part of The Ladies' joint personality,
whereas Are Men concentrates on the
quirkier, more upbeat power-pop part. This is not an unbreakable law — there
are exceptions to the rule on both sides — but hardly a coincidence, either:
faced with the perspective of sorting their large pile into two smaller piles,
Page and Robertson must have settled on a «thematic» approach. Which, upon
first sight, means that Are Men has
a priori better chances to succeed, given that the Ladies have always tended to
thrive in power-pop, not roots-rock environments.
And it does, but not quite — some of these
songs do actually manage to reach the heights of Stunt / Maroon-era
material, yet on the whole the album still carries the stamp of the «quantity
over quality» department. For instance, sentimental acoustic soft-rock like
ʽBeautifulʼ and ʽHalf A Heartʼ is the kind of generic indie material you so
often hear in pretending-to-be-cool family entertainment movies that wish to
ask serious questions and then answer them with cheap soapy melodrama —
uninteresting melodies spiced up with «authentic» arrangements and
«intelligent» vocals. Again, the vocals are the weakest parts: sentimental
music cannot be effective without actual sentiments, something that neither
Page nor Robertson can properly provide — you'd at least need a Paul McCartney
to make this stuff work.
The upbeat material is altogether on another
plane. Sometimes it almost feels as if they try too hard: ʽAngry Peopleʼ, with its falsetto woo-hoos, martial
beats, and happy harp à la Stevie Wonder,
strictly follows an old patented recipe for pop catchiness — but it is, after
all, a song about correcting angry people by surrounding them with happy ones,
so the form suits the message to a tee, and it would be silly to get irritated
instead of just getting into the fun groove. As Robertson sings in ʽDown To
Earthʼ (another one of those quirky Apples In Stereo-style pop-rockers that
thrives on combining guitars with sci-fi synths), "some people are just
all show / well, I don't mind that if the show's worth watching" — well,
the Ladies themselves operate better when they are mostly show, or, at least,
when their sincere attitude is covered with plenty of makeup.
For some strange reason, Are Men yielded no singles, even though at least a good third of
these songs would be top-notch single material for the band. Page's ʽRunning
Out Of Inkʼ would be a prime candidate, in particular — it's fast, quirky,
catchy, funny, and structurally diverse, as Page goes from a comically paranoid
delivery into a comically operatic mid-section and back again. ʽQualityʼ would
inevitably be a hit with college audiences, as it combines the steady romantic
pulse of ʽEvery Breath You Takeʼ with lyrics that subtly send up the
know-it-all attitude ("my quality, biology enhanced with high
technology"): the Ladies have always tended to strictly observe the
balance between the college punk and the college nerd, and they do have that
talent for coming across as seriously educated guys without any particular
showing off.
Yet another time, two of the best songs are
contributed by Kevin Hearn: ʽSerendipityʼ has serious woo-potential in its
echoey riff and, especially, clever vocal modulation — since he possesses the
softest and sweetest voice in the entire band, Hearn is able to work some
subtle magic with it that neither Page nor Robertson can conjure, and it is
almost as if they recognize and respect that, by letting ʽSerendipityʼ open the
album. Good move, or «Hearn the softie» could have been lost in the 16-song
ocean: it certainly takes extra time and effort to uncover the similar charms
of ʽAnother Spinʼ, where he keeps looking for his girl in different places
(including Afghanistan, if only because it dissonantly rhymes with the song
title) without any hope to find the right one, but in a state of complete vocal
and instrumental serenity nevertheless.
I will not attempt individual descriptions /
comments on all the songs — there is nothing truly original or vehemently
thought-provoking about most of them — but on the whole, this is a good listen,
and although I have encountered opinions that value the first record over the
second, I really have no interest in
mulling and sussing and mulling and sussing over the Ladies' introspective
side until it finally «gets to me». They have good, natural pop instincts, and
they are well demonstrated — again — on Barenaked
Ladies Are Men, and that is why it deserves a thumbs up, albeit a slightly less
excited one than in the case of Stunt
/ Maroon. If anything, splitting
their personalities in two just ended up as a transparent demonstration — which
of the personalities it would be more fun to hang out with, and which one
would do better if it never showed its nose out of the dormitory, not ever
again.
Check "Barenaked Ladies Are Men" (MP3) on Amazon
Big improvement over Are Me mainly due to a much better song selection. I'm still not a fan of the production style and it's their least consistant album by far thanks to numerous duds, mainly in the Robertson ballad department (some of which are even lamer than the weak tracks from Pirate Ship if you ask me). But a healthy portion of these songs are decent to great.
ReplyDeleteI recommend looking up Steven Page's reworked version of Running Out Of Ink from his solo album A Singer Must Die. He goes even further with the Operatic approach there.
This is far from my favourite BNL album but it can stick around. Replace some of the lamer tunes with the three or four highlights from Are Me make the album 12 tracks instead of 15 and then this whole double album fiasco could have been nicely avoided.
It functions decently as the "proper" swan song of classic-era BNL (so to speak), though personally I think the "improper" swan song that would follow thoroughly beats it.