Andrew’s Judgmental Album Reviews: Barenaked Ladies – Detour de Force (2021)

The JAR continues to be filled with bands that were big in the 90s with new releases! Does the new Barenaked Ladies album recapture some of the old magic, or are we at the end of Canada’s class clowns’ proverbial rope?

Most of us know these guys from the One Week song from 1998 and/or the opening theme song to Big Bang Theory. Granted, Barenaked Ladies have been at it since 1988 in one form or fashion. Gordon was their first official album in 1992, and they’ve been going strong in that quirky, smart, artsy folk pop rock genre ever since.

In 2009 the co-lead singer Steven Page left the group, and they were never quite the same after that. Many of Page’s songs were the depressing content veiled behind pop rock instrumentation like, The Old Apartment, Alcohol and The Flag, to name a few. So when he left, not only did the interesting timbre of his voice make the band sound wholly more generic, the clever aspect of the lyrics became lacking.

That’s not to say everything after 2009 has been awful, just definitely not nearly as consistent. After getting inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2018 and reconciling a little with Page, there was always hope for a reunion, however the difficulty of 2020 probably didn’t aid in that effort. So we get an album that was apparently supposed to be more stripped down, but got re-imagined since everyone’s life took an unexpected detour in 2020.

Time to see if their most recent album can capture some old magic, poignant lyrics or quirky humor in the situation to get us from point A to point B.

• Artist: Barenaked Ladies
• Album: Detour de Force (2021)
• Label: Raisin’ Records

Flip kicks off the album with their usual mixture of pop culture or childhood joke references, a catchy enough hook and a fairly light-hearted approach in general. It also stays in that Indie Rock vein that they’ve leaned into since Steven Page left. Speaking of songs that sound very much like Barenaked Ladies in the last decade, Good Life, does the same thing with the sing-a-long chorus and trying to mask relatively ironic lyrics in an upbeat song. Thus far, the first two songs feel very BNL, but also too much like the same old thing.

New Disaster, tries to put the quirky spin on the world situation, but honestly it just feels like saying a whole lot of nothing. It’s like the most basic observational humor at a local stand up club. Big Back Yard, is the first song on the album that Ed Robertson doesn’t sing lead, and it’s just awkward. Kevin Hearn has a Peter Gabriel-esque voice, but this feels like a kid’s song and really deviates sonically and tonally for the fourth song on the album. BNL have always had quirky country/folk/rock stylings, but this is just awkward and goes nowhere as song.

Live Well continues the sonic shifts and we get a twangy country song that sounds like something Alan Jackson would pen. While not cacophonous or problematic musically, it just lingers and says a lot of nothing about getting back up and taking lumps in stride. Flat Earth, I suppose is trying to basically call out Flat Earthers as stupid, wrapped in this little song about not believing something someone says; because if you believed THAT crap, you might as well believe in flat Earth. Here Together would definitely be the weakest song on the album thus far. It sounds like an intermission song that does nothing but fill time.  No offense to Jim Creegan who does lead, the song is just a salad at restaurant; a promissory note that the entrée is on the way.

Roll Out randomly changes the tone back to up-tempo Pop Rock with digital horns and a weird funk bass driving the rhythm. Bylaw is another Kevin Hearn lead song, but this is clever. This reminds me of something like Light Up My Room from the Stunt album. It’s relatable, clever, uses bylaw and by law to drive the verses and chorus. About two thirds of the way through the album and we finally found a really good song. God Forbid while on the merits of music they usually make, fits their mold well, but again, the tonal jumps and the fact that you can tell which songs were intended to be “more stripped down” makes the flow of this album awkward. Even with an interesting premise based around not believing in God but still applying the idiom, it is terribly lacking.

Paul Chambers is a weird song. It is a simple swingy Jazz number, with Creegan doing lead again; and this is actually quite a nice little song. But where in the world does a swingy horn laden Jazz number fit on this album? Really good song, but more out of place than Wayne Gretzky on the Blues. And now we go to National Park which is just…I got nothing. It’s like Simon & Garfunkel on Xanax. Man Made Lake does a slightly better job at being a folky banjo ballad and not completely derivative, but it’s still very much a song that they play during a montage of building things with your Dad before he left to go get cigarettes 10 years ago.

Internal Dynamo ends the 14 song album…and wait, wait…what? WHY DID THEY WAIT 50 minutes for this song! This has a Kearn song with an interesting sandwich of Robertson and drummer Tyler Stewart chiming in to make things more dynamic. This feels like their live riffing they do during concerts, and it works well. Kearn’s Peter Gabriel space exploration tone, getting interrupted with Robertson and Stewart’s loud approach is fun and clever.

This album had its struggles getting made, direction re-imagined and it shows. We get a sonic mess, but there are enough pieces to see what they were trying and a good portion of the album still fits the BNL motif. Schizophrenic at best is a way to describe the album, but not awful, just shows that at this point in their career and without Page, Barenaked Ladies are a shell of themselves.

Final Judgment: 5.05/10