As a young Canadian, I'm pretty well acquainted with the hits of the Barenaked Ladies. Their huge albums Stunt and Maroon were released when I was late in Grade school (effectively, Junior High) and their songs were inescapable on CanCon dominated current-hit stations. Even moreso than "One Week," songs like "Call and Answer," "Get in Line," "It's All Been Done," "Alcohol" (criminally omitted from their Greatest Hits) "Too Little Too Late" "Falling for the First Time" and "Pinch Me," as well as their earlier hits, were a guarantee in any car ride that lasted more than a half hour. Maybe my appreciation for these tunes is largely nostalgia, but I think they mostly hold up as good tunes.
But to me, the band began to stumble in this decade and it felt like they couldn't decide what made them funny and likable, or how to mature along the path that they were taking. Their post-2000 output sounds like an attempt at re-enactment than of moving forward. I couldn't name you a single song off the three albums they released between Maroon and the departure of Steven Page in 2009, other than "Another Postcard," which is kind of a lame tune. They released their first album after Page in early 2010, which showed a pretty precise direction: decent, folksy, old-person music. There's nothing wrong with a sappy reach-out broken-brother ballad like "You Run Away" but it's not for me. We put it on in the store one time and I had to turn it off because it was so much of the same. And if Page isn't the "You" in the title lyric, Ed Robertson needs to step back and see what he's writing. Also, it sounds pretty exactly like like Five for Fighting. But at least it looks like BNL has found its direction. And I can take "Every Subway Car." That's a standout.
I'm more interested in Page's solo output. Whether it's a good thing or not, for the three minutes of song I've embedded above, it sounds like 1999 or 2000 again, with a classic pop sound that doesn't go out of style. Page, visually and kinda-sonically, recalls Elvis Costello, probably not by accident. While his voice seems to waver a bit in the crooner parts (and that may be the point) the chorus is gold and the lyrics are tremendously clever: both funny and pointed, which BNL was at its best.
I guess my impression -- having not heard either of these albums in their entirety -- is that Page's output is a bit more natural, comes easier, and is just more fun without having to filter the work through the other members of the band. Moreso than his ex-bandmates, he knows what he wants to say. I can see glossy pop-rock like this not being for everyone, but those people weren't listening to BNL anyway (if they could avoid it.) For me, this is a song that brings me back to a great place in my mind, which is one thing music should sometimes do (another is to take you someplace you've never been before, which is rare.)
One last memory, re: BNL, as the battle rages on YouTube comments between BNL's "All in Good Time and Page's Page One. When my play was being done back in 2009 (oh God so long ago by now) I went out to drink with the cast and crew and we all spontaneously burst out in singing "Alcohol," toasting each other and laughing at our ability to collectively recall the lyrics. Like I said, any young Canadian of our upbringings would.
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