COMFORTABLY BARENAKED
New disc finds the Ladies content with their songwriting, recording and touring
With their 11th album, the Barenaked Ladies accomplished a first: a higher chart placement in the U. S. than at home.
In 2013, Grinning Streak debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart south of the border, the biggest splash the Ladies had managed there in a decade. In Canada, however, the mature collection peaked at No. 12.
As the veteran Toronto band prepared to put out a 12th record ( Silverball) this week, they confirmed that they indeed see very different responses on each side of the border.
“The band’s got a lot of baggage in Canada,” mused frontman Ed Robertson, seated alongside drummer Tyler Stewart.
“( Here) everybody feels like they know the whole history, the whole saga of the band, and they really identify with the characters of Barenaked Ladies.
“In the U. S., they know us from The Big Bang Theory theme song and they know us from all the TV shows we’ve been on down there. They go: ‘ Oh, Barenaked Ladies, that’s that band with all those hits.’
“I would say,” he added, “it’s refreshing to go play without all that baggage.”
The quartet — slimmed from a five- piece with the 2009 departure of founding singer Steven Page — doesn’t seem particularly encumbered these days, regardless.
Silverball coalesced with an unprecedented lack of hand- wringing or second- thinking.
Arriving a brisk two years after Grinning Streak, the Gavin Brown-produced disc finds the band continuing its post- Page burrow into mellow, melodic pop.
With an esthetic inspired by Robertson’s enthusiasm for pinball — he collects old machines and actually injured himself by overplaying the pinball incarnation of The Lord of the Rings — the new album was written in three weeks and recorded in roughly the same.
“Every writing process for me has kind of been filled with some element of doubt or pressure,” said Robertson, 44.
“That was absent from this process.... I just thought: ‘ I’m good at this now.’ I don’t have to be worrying about the result anymore.”
Decades into their career, they’ve similarly adopted a positive attitude toward touring.
Where once the band members might have guarded spare moments of solitude carefully, Robertson now touts the morale-building potential of bonding over bike rides or tapas lunches.
Though Stewart jokingly laments the increasing scarcity of “underwear days,” he also raved: “We made it a mandate in this band to have a healthy workplace in the last seven years, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Commitment is, not surprisingly, a major theme on Silverball.
“I’m in a 27- year band relationship and a 21- year marriage,” Robertson said. “It’s something that I look back on with wonderment.
“I feel like I’ve got all my stress and insecurity out of my system in years past,” he added.
Where the band spent much of the 2000s experimenting with their musical identity and eventually enduring inner- band turmoil, they seem more content now.
“It does help when you have other elements of your life that you’re really proud of,” Stewart said.
“I could be written off by as many critics as possible and then I’m going to walk back into my backyard and jump in my swimming pool with my three beautiful daughters and I’m going to barbecue some delicious chicken wings and drink some fine wine. This band has given me the opportunity to live a great life. If you have that going for you, you have less to prove.”