I gotta admit, the Barenaked Ladies came up with a pretty lame title for their new album, the first one in a very long time that they've released independently (their holiday album notwithstanding). Barenaked Ladies Are Me. Aside from being grammatically incorrect, it just plain makes no sense, until you're made aware that the companion piece, already released digitally and due for a physical release on CD early next year, is called Barenaked Ladies Are Men. Get it? They were trying to explain the band name and they left out a letter, thereby changing the meaning. And to that I utter a single, dry, unenthusiastic "Ha".

But let's ignore the title. These goofy Canadian pop-rockers have done nearly everything else right on this album. Puns and silly titles aside, this group has never really been about drop-dead hilarious joke songs. Sure, their early albums were full of goofy classics and there's been the oddball silly song on their most recent, more mainstream efforts, but I'd categorize Barenaked Ladies more in the cute, amusing, or clever categories, rather than laugh-out-loud funny. What elevates them far above the status of "novelty act" (and this is a fact that a lot of casual listeners miss) is the careful wordplay and sensitivity shown on many of their other songs... even when those songs are really just about a guy being a selfish jerk. Their lyrics are rife with apt observations, often made in unexpected ways, and usually involving the inherent messed-up-ness of normal people trying to make relationships work. The wry humor that surfaces in their lyrics is often intended to keep the mood light even when the subject matter is darker (this was perhaps seen most clearly on the album Maroon). It can take a little bit of getting used to when part of you just expects a band with such a name to be a comedy act, but let their charm catch on, and it'll endure throughout a lot of changes in the musical landscape around these guys.

What about the music? These guys started off with the blissfully un-grungy sounds of clean acoustic guitar, piano, and upright bass, initially only treading into "rock" territory as a way of making fun of themselves for not being a serious rock band ("Alternative Girlfriend" and so forth). Somewhere along the way, they decided that this giddy brand of pop/rock looked good on them, and before you knew it they were signed and they had cranked out the ridiculously huge hit "One Week". And perhaps their old-school fans have grown weary of this approach, as evidenced by the lackluster response to their last album put out on a label, Everything to Everyone. So how did they respond after finding themselves independent? Quite simply, with some of the best damn music they've ever made. Lush, rambling acoustic tracks bordering on country or bluegrass. Banjo and accordion sprinkled generously into a few songs. Electronic keyboards and horns lighting up the landscape elsewhere. A few big, fun rockers to round things out, taking the best lessons that they learned during their era of mainstream fame and mixing it well with the initial vision of the band. It's a collaborative effort, perhaps moreso than any BNL record in recent memory. Bassist Jim Creegan's voice is heard, front and center, for the first time since Born on a Pirate Ship. Keyboardist Kevin Hearn signs lead for the first time as well (on a non-hidden track, anyway). Lead vocalists Stephen Page and Ed Robertson split the rest of the singing duties as usual, and this multiple-singer approach works to their advantage, making the group feel like a true community of artists who bounce fun and interesting ideas off of each other and see what happens.

Does this mean that BLAM (as I will henceforth call it, because the acronym is way more amusing to me than the actual album title) is a scattershot album? No. Not unless you considered Gordon to be one. There are times when the album could flow better, or when I think that the other two guys who get a turn at the mic didn't put forth their best songwriting efforts. The one humorous song does kind of pale in comparison to classics like "If I Had $1,000,000". But honestly, these things aren't a big deal to me. The material is stronger, on average, than anything they've done recently. Honestly, if you disqualified their best-of collection that came out in 2001, this might just be the best album that the band has released yet. Still not a five-star effort, but definitely close to it. I’ll admit that my perspective might be a bit skewed since I'm still getting used to their early albums as whole, I didn't care much for Stunt, and I thought Maroon was an excellent piece of work, and I argued for the merits of Everything to Everyone when a lot of their older fans were dismissing that record. Hey, I'm not the typical BNL fan. But I'm convinced that they've got one of 2006's most notable sleeper hit albums on their hands.

Adrift
In the morning, open your eyes
The waterfalls, the fire flies
You're an abacus
And my heart was counting on us...
What better way to start than with a lovely, gentle folk song? OK, so maybe you could think of many better ways, but this isn't unusual - "Jane" was oddly positioned as the lead track on Maybe You Should Drive, after all. This one rolls like a peaceful river, with Ed singing lyrics that he collaborated on with Steve and Kevin, over the lush plucking of acoustic guitar and banjo. It's a soft call for a distant lover to return, a song designed to come across the radio waves as her eyes start dropping on a lonely late night drive - "Your heart's got a heavy load, there's still a long way to go. Keep your eyes on the road." Metaphors abound here, from the poignant ("Something isn't right, like the deep blue without the great white") to the awkward ("I'm adrift without a snowflake"), but the performance is lovely, with two or three of the guys' vocals layered behind Ed during the chorus, and a pretty string coda that might fit on a Sigur Ros album if it repeated for, say, three more minutes.

Bank Job
It should have been filled with the usual ones
Throwing their cash into mutual funds
We all had our ski masks and sawed off shotguns
But how do you plan for a bank full of nuns?
Momentum-wise, the placement of this song is all wrong. The round keyboard notes that open it up make it sound like some video game for kids that involves bursting bubbles, Tyler Stewart's drums are a bit limp, and the relaxed 6/8 rhythm doesn't quite give a song which is intended to be funny the punch that it really deserves. That's not to say that I'm not amused by Ed's story of a few guys who attempt to rob a bank and totally both the job - this is like what would happen if that TV show The Nine were a comedy. The punchline here is great, but it feels a bit out of place at track two, like you're expecting the full-on comedy songs to trade off with the serious ones (and this turns out to be the only such song on the album) - maybe placing it later in the track listing would work better. For what it's worth, though, Ed does a good job of sounding flustered and laying all of the blame on his posse's ringleader while maintaining that he was just the guy tasked with driving the getaway car. In the end, conscience is what botches the plan for them, which is humorous, but the wackiness of the whole situation is at odds with the more normal situations described by every other song on this album.

Sound of Your Voice
I let you down, and fell right off of your good list
I hope each day you'll find peace and forgiveness...
An electric guitar jolts us awake here, signaling what we'd expect to be a rocker with its stop-start riff, but this too turns out to be a fairly relaxed romp in 6/8 time, with a 60's slow-dance feel to it, thanks to the piano. (The riff just fools you into expecting 4/4.) Kevin wrote this one and handed it off to Steve, who gets his first lead vocal on this album, which is spent on a fairly simple "I goofed up and I want you back" type of sentiment. He frames this in the observation that he's lonely waking up in the morning all by himself, without the person he loves lying by his side. There's some neat guitar soloing here, and I love the way that the song contains a false ending after the final chorus, kicking back in with the drums and taking it around the block one more time so that Steve can repeat the line, "Take it from me, there's not much to see in this void". The way he stretches out the word "void" is what sells it.

Easy
I've been burned before
You're not fooling me, there's no mystery, you've forgotten what you're hiding for
Call it self-defense
You can obfuscate and manipulate, but it's only at your own expense...
Here we find a more up-tempo acoustic rocker with a catchy-as-hell descending chord sequence that is deftly picked out by either Ed or Steve, as Ed takes the mic for a song which seems ironically easygoing at first with its simple echoes of "Eaaaaaaa-syyyyyyy..." in the chorus, but which turns out to describe a complex relationship in which a girl makes it "easy" for Ed to feel the gamut of loving and hateful emotions that he feels towards her. He can't help but feel sorry for her when she begs for forgiveness, regardless of how much she keeps infuriating him. The guys get bonus points for using such wicked cool vocabulary words as "hangdog" and "obfuscate" in this one. Really, the only negative thing I can say here is that the ending drags out a bit and seems to dull the impact of the song slightly.

Home
Stuck in the middle of the road
For better or worse, we compromise
You may have won my hand, dear
But it was the consolation prize...
Is that a mandolin I hear? Lovely. Replace the electric guitar with acoustic in this ballad, and I could picture Nickel Creek singing it. I don't fully understand this one - it seems to be about a guy who discovers that he feels right at home after giving up on a girl who has had one crisis too many, but then he later relents and indicates that she is the one who makes him feel at home. This song is a good exercise at flirting with cliches that involve the word "home", only to turn around and manipulate the endings and/or meanings of phrases into something else. The wit is subtle, but compare what you're hearing to what you expected to hear, and it'll come clear.

Bull in a China Shop
I'm a public embarrassment
I'm a bottle of diet poison
I'm a walking advertisement
For everything I never meant
And everything I never meant to be...
This one comes running out of the gate as if it's the successor to happy, upbeat hits from the band's past, such as "It's All Been Done" or "Too Little Too Late". It's slightly less forceful and idiosyncratic than those songs were - the main hook seems to be a cute little horn fanfare that pops up as the guy's sweet harmonies lead into the chorus. The song is basically Steve's admission of what a lame-o he is - he's the socially awkward boyfriend you just can't take anywhere without him making a scene. It stops just short of being an apology - he seems to realize that his childish goofing around doesn't amount to much, but there's a part of him that doesn't care and just wishes that she didn't either. "All the fun that the law allows", he boldly promises, and then for a second, there's the realization that it's not as much of a blast as it used to be: "All the fun, but with half the meaning." The disconnect between knowing what you should do and actually doing it comes in the chorus, when, after admitting all of his wrongdoing, he gleefully declares, "I can't hear a thing... 'cause I'm not listening!"

Everything Had Changed
I hold my breath and count to ten
I hate it now, hated it then
I've seen it all before, a failure and a bore
But that's what friends are for...
Here's a rather odd one that they dug up from Jim Creegan's archives and tinkered with until it was just right. It's a bare-bones, swampy dance of accordion and banjo, which paints mental pictures of a ghost town that's come back to life. Perhaps building off of the "Bull in a China Shop" persona, Steve sings of a choice to become a crotchety old hermit, pushing his friends away and making pessimistic observations such as "Divergent journeys, we will meet again in Hell". And yet, there's some unnamed person who pops up and displays the stubbornness of a true friend, and this turns the world askew for Steven - "Then, one day, I was not alone - everything had changed, everything was strange." I love this song because the music is daring and non-trendy - they're almost in Sufjan Stevens' territory here. They might not have gotten away with this one if the album had been put out by a major label, but whatever the reasoning for its appearance here, the song is a lovable misfit.

Peterborough and the Kawarthas
Bird, book, and basketball
Squirrel, dog, and learning how to crawl
I found my heart when he came
Let my leaving leave like rain...
Speaking of misfits, this second contribution from Creegan, which he wrote on his own and on which he sings lead, feels like we've flipped over to a solo album by someone else entirely. It's not bad, with its light, wobbling guitar melody and stuttering percussion, but it seems so relaxed and slight that I wonder at times if Creegan is bored with his own song. Ontario residents may be thrilled at Jim's mention of the city of Peterborough and the Kawartha Lakes, but he repeats the song's title after a few lines of each verse, so it kind of goes beyond establishing the setting into more insular territory that apparently only makes sense to him. He's missing someone from whom he's been separated (perhaps one of his children?), and he tries to reconnect with them through letters or phone calls by noting that they share the same weather and things like that. A little more deviation from the main melody, and from that pattern of repeating the title might give this song a little more room for emotional impact; as it stands now, it's the album's weakest track. The little weather report that shows up in the middle of the song seems like a weak attempt to fill space by being cute, too.

Maybe You're Right
It was oversimplified, it was underthought
And nothing was ever done to stop it
Everything was fortified by all the lies we bought
And nothing was ever done to stop it...
Even though I don't like the sparkly keyboard intro (I tend to prefer Kevin when he's in acoustic piano mode or performing stringed instruments), this song turns out to be my favorite on the album. It feels like the new album's version of "Call and Answer", with Steve's description of some unspecified compliment setting him up for what sounds like an apology - "Shall I take back everything I've ever said live my whole life in silence instead?" This builds up wonderfully with acoustic guitar and ever-strengthening drums, and some neat vocal overlap between Steve and Ed (who kind of gets to sing his own version of the chorus the second time through), finally exploding in a maelstrom of strings and horns as Steve boldly declares his intent to not back down - "Maybe you're right, but I don't think so!" The horns then take the song home, and the resulting instrumental celebration is a thing of joyous beauty.

Take It Back
It's hard to keep your mouth shut
Harder still to make noise
But we can't have the perfect 20/20 hindsight
That our fate enjoys...
It's interesting that a song with this title follows a song which is spent on pondering whether or not to "take back" one's stance during a conflict. With Kevin's tinkling piano riff and Ed's ironic, apologetic-but-not-really tone of voice, it seems at first that this is another song about a dispute between friends and his desire to wave the white flag and just get it over with, but look closely at the lyrics, and you'll notice something else entirely. News report? Lives saved by plastic knives? Remove our shoes? What's going on here? It's subtle, but this one might be a wry observation of how Canada's wacky southern neighbors have been handling their paranoia about terrorism. Perhaps Ed's the unfortunate soul who made the joke that you're not supposed to make while in an airport, and now he's received the beat down from security and he's looking up with a sheepish grin, saying, "Whoops, I was just kidding." It could be subtle humor, it could be social commentary. Either way, there's more to this song than you'll realize at first glance.

Vanishing
Isn't that the necklace he found behind your ear?
He's floating upside-down below a chandelier
Wishing he had the power to make you reappear...
This another one of those songs that gently floats by, even more so than "Adrift". Kevin gets to sing lead, and it's interesting that his song doesn't focus on the piano, just as "Peterborough and the Kawarthas" didn't focus on the bass. It's a concoction of light, distant percussion, hand-picked acoustic guitar and the blurry, dark grey strokes of an electric guitar - a moody, late night, sympathetic sort of sound. He's speaking to a woman about a boyfriend or husband of hers who plays the role of a magician, and who seems to have inadvertently made her disappear beneath all of the other things in his life that he sees as more important. Kevin has the vulnerable voice to make this work, but as was the case with Jim's song, the band runs the risk of sounding so different from their usual selves that the song doesn't quite fit the album.

Rule the World with Love
I need to love you with an iron fist
I need to love you with a secret list
I need to love you 'til you don't exist...
Nothing like an upbeat, cheery, nerdy song about the power of love to bring this album in toward the home stretch! Pay attention here - this is another case of twisting the cliches back in upon themselves and showing how they don't make sense. Oft-recited maxims about love and war are toyed with here, as Steven humorously milks the concept that "Love conquers all" for all it's worth. This may be a bit of a political statement directed at powers-that-be who start wars and claim they're for the good of mankind, or it could just be a fun writing exercise born out of a general annoyance with Hallmark cards. The drums pack a joyful punch in this song, the accordion riff during the chorus is cute, and basically the band has their biggest goofy smiles on, hoping that we'll catch the irony. I caught it, and it's pure madcap genius.

Wind It Up
If you are leaving, then I wish you luck
I hope someone can make your heart warm
I was a baby when I learned to suck
But you have raised it to an art form...
The band saves their biggest, baddest guitar riffs for last in this no-holds-barred kiss-off to a girl who's done Ed wrong. I normally don't like these types of songs, but such a song makes sense in the humorous context of an album where time has been spent on confessing the immaturity on the guy's side of things, and in some weird way, since they started with a gentle ballad, it makes sense to end the way you'd expect most bands to start. There are tons of clever lines here which basically say, "Yeah, I see through all of your crap and I'm not taking it any more, so just keep running your mouth and digging yourself in deeper". Perhaps most humorous is this little taunt in the second verse - "I can't believe that you'd believe that I would fake it. Wait... unless you could the things I said when we were naked." There's a sweet guitar solo near the end, and it all goes careening right into a sharp ending that very suddenly silences the album, as if to say that this isn't intended to bring closure, and there's more to be revealed on the flipside, Barenaked Ladies Are Men. (While you're waiting to hear that, go to the BNL website and check out the amusing video for this song, which is wholly created from clips of videos sent in by fans as part of a contest.)

There you have it - a solid musical ride with plenty of unexpected twists and turns, lots of witty moments that make you go "Heh, that's an interesting way of putting it", and very few weak spots. I don't know whether there's any rhyme or reason to how the wealth of songs that the band wrote were split between this disc and Barenaked Ladies Are Men, but let's just say that if these are the cuts that they felt were the strongest, and the album soon to follow will be like the Amnesiac to this album's Kid A, then I'll say that I still expect that next disc to be pretty good, because this one is borderline awesome. There's something in it for new fans, old fans, lapsed fans - if you liked the BNL at any point in time, or if you've been on the edge, curious enough to wonder where to start checking them out, BLAM is a great place to either start or restart.

ALBUM WORTH:
Adrift $1.50
Bank Job $1
Sound of Your Voice $1
Easy $1.50
Home $1
Bull in a China Shop $1.50
Everything Had Changed $1.50
Peterborough and the Kawarthas $.50
Maybe You're Right $2
Take It Back $1
Vanishing $.50
Rule the World with Love $1.50
Wind It Up $2
TOTAL: $17.50

Band Members:
Stephen Page: Lead vocals, guitars
Ed Robertson: Lead vocals, guitars
Kevin Hearn: Piano, keyboards, synths, guitar, mandolin, accordion, vocals
Jim Creegan: Bass guitar, double bass, vocals
Tyler Stewart: Drums, percussion, vocals

Website: http://www.bnlmusic.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening