REVIEW: Barenaked Ladies have lost their direction
A band could never get away with calling itself Barenaked Ladies today. There can be only one! Even as the original’s former magic was sadly lacking during a maddening show at the Jubilee Auditorium Thursday night.
It was maddening because the four remaining members – singer-guitarist Ed Robertson, keyboardist-guitarist Kevin Hearn, bassist Jim Creeggan, and drummer Tyler Stewart – are so goddamned talented. Their skills at freestyle rap, comedy, novelty songs, and audience rapport were generously displayed for a crowd of just 1,600. They drew 10 times that number in their heyday. OK, maybe five. No matter. A show’s a show. These guys are also stellar musicians, each showing their talents at given times, a fact easily forgotten given their easy, deceptively breezy material. They’ve been doing this so long they made it look simple. They all sing beautifully together.
So it was a fun concert. Entertaining most of the time – yet insufferable when they did some the scattered and super-corny new material from their latest album, Fake Nudes. Trump shot and self-reference in two words. Nice. The new music, not so much. Worst of all was the top-40 medley they always insist on doing, this one late in the show filled with Bruno Mars and his ilk. It was dreadful. Gets worse every year. Is this bit a reflection of the state of modern pop music? I wish they’d knock it off and try something new.
Overall, as the night wore on, the highlights and the hits equally more or less equally mixed with the duds, there was a creeping feeling that this great Canadian band that had once captured so many hearts was missing something, that they’re squandering their gifts on schtick and novelty when once there was so much more – and could be so much more if they could only find their direction again. Just a feeling.
Is the band name a factor? It seems their ridiculous name has shaped their music. People forget that “Barenaked Ladies” caused a minor stir when they started almost 30 years ago, in those more innocent, pre-internet days. Some news-papers called the name inappropriate. Puritans frothed at the mouth. But people soon got used to it. It’s just the name of the band, man!
But then they had to live up to it. What else could they do? Write political songs? No, Barenaked Ladies walked the fine line between silly and serious in distinctive bippity boppy songs that came off like kids’ music for grown-ups, or maybe the other way around. It veers dizzily from funny to sad, sometimes in the same tune. Take for instance the huge hit If I Had a Million Dollars, played late in the show Thursday night. For all its simple innocence the song hits home with the line, “If had a million dollars, I’d buy your love” – which is really sad when you think about it. Their writing is child-like, sometimes even childish. In the song Pinch Me, they make the “I just made you say underwear” joke, but then comes a deep thought, “On an evening such as this, it’s hard to tell if I exist.” We’ve all been cheap generic viagra canada there. Barenaked Ladies have helped a lot of young nerds through their awkward, lonely phase.
You can’t help but like these guys. Robertson was a warm, funny and avuncular host who at one point rapped about the virtues of beards, his own included: “You gotta grow a beard to alleviate the cold, the grey looks sexy or so I am told!” Bonus points for working in Edmonton and Gord Downie references in the songs. As with every other BNL show, there was lots of merry banter, the other guys frequently chiming in with their own wisecracks until the evening felt like a comedy revue. Keyboardist Kevin Hearn did a lovely, apparently impromptu number we’ll just call Don’t Shit Your Pants. They even “corpsed” in the second song – theatre talk for breaking character by laughing, also known as “Harvey Kormaning.” The song in question was Blame It On Me, and they had to start it again because they were laughing so hard. The crowd laughed with them, naturally. Fun is infectious. And this was even before the song in take 2 got to this part where Robertson sings, “You think you’re so smart, but I’ve seen you naked and I’ll probably see you naked again.” Yet it’s a heartbreak song. Sad.
See, this is what happens when giggling teenage nerds who don’t know how to talk to girls start to grow old.
It’s obvious to suggest that Steven Page is what’s missing. The joke has been made that Barenaked Ladies without him is like Van Halen without either David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar. Page left the band in 2009 after he was busted for cocaine. It couldn’t have come at a worse time – Barenaked Ladies had just released a children’s album. It was a big loss. Page was the tragic clown who created the perfect contrast to the giddy style of his bandmates. There was magic. He was dramatic, flambouyant, arguably the nerdiest-looking of them all (except for drummer Tyler Stewart and he can hide behind his kit) and the main face of the band. It’s sad he had to leave.
But BNL has heart beyond Page. They proved it in post-Page shows, and at certain moments in this one in Edmonton. Ever the tricksters, they played the first six or so songs in front of a cheesy backdrop of a giant draped sheet (with Stewart behind a teeny tiny drum set), the band arrayed like a folk group – before the sheet dropped to reveal the more elaborate “rock ‘n’ roll stage.” They sounded better as a folk band, frankly.
The highlights of the show included the masterpiece meld of maudlin and meaningful: Brian Wilson, about another “tragic clown” who turned out to be a legend of rock ‘n’ roll. Wilson also put out some total crap – as great artists sometimes do.
Maybe there’s a lesson here. Maybe there’s hope yet. Maybe Barenaked Ladies could get back with Steven Page after all this time, and see if they can recapture the magic again. Because it’s still there.
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