Barenaked Ladies & Wallflowers Non-Album Tracks – Playlists on Parade

By Chris Moore:

While I always have been and always will be an “album guy,” I have to admit that the ability to download singles does indeed have its merits.  Until recently, music fans haven’t had very good options when their favorite artists and bands record non-album tracks.  We’ve essentially had two options: 1) buy the soundtrack, import, etc. that the song was released on, or 2) wait years for an official compilation album to come out.  In the first case, you’ve spent more money than it’s probably worth and you’re left with a handful of songs that you don’t want and won’t listen to.  In the second case, well…

Who wants to wait that long?

So, I’ve just recently been putting aside my distaste for downloading music and started scavenging iTunes for songs I’m interested in.  What I never expected to find was a wealth of non-album tracks from two of my all-time favorite bands: the Barenaked Ladies and the Wallflowers.  I was thrilled to find twenty songs that weren’t forgettable throw-aways.  For the most part, the twenty songs I found and downloaded were well worth the price of admission.

Of course, I couldn’t help myself:  I just had to create a playlist!

The twenty songs you’ll find below run the gamut from demos to covers to generally unheard gems.  I couldn’t get enough of the Wallflowers’ take on the Rubber Soul classic “I’m Looking Through You,” so that quickly became the lead-off track.  Odd as it may seem coming from a guy who regularly contributes to a cover song music video blog, I don’t consider myself a fan of covers.  (You’d better believe, for instance, that I laughed out loud about two sentences into a serious article about an upcoming Phil Collins album of Motown covers.)  That being said, there are some phenomenal ones here, not the least of which are BnL’s cover of “Oh Yoko” and Jakob Dylan and Dhani Harrison’s take on “Gimme Some Truth.”  There’s something special about hearing a performance by the sons of two of the best singer/songwriters in rock music history, one of whom is a distinguished singer/songwriter in his own right.

I was blown away by the Barenaked Ladies originals that I found.  Typically, a band saves their crummiest little numbers for this sort of fare, so I certainly didn’t expect a BnL song on the Simple Life soundtrack to be anything stellar.  Go ahead, though:  listen to “The Other Day I Met A Bear” and just try to stop yourself from dragging and dropping it into your BnL music folder.  While “One Little Slip” isn’t anything outstanding, it’s a fun track, as much as “La La La La Lemon” is a funny track.

What weaves these covers and originals together on this playlist are the great live takes, particularly the iTunes Originals versions.  “After the Blackbird Sings” hails from the Wallflowers’ forgettable self-titled 1992 debut, but it is more than resurrected here.  I was thrilled to finally get a live version of “It’s All Been Done,” made all the more enjoyable for me because it reminds me of singing backup during MoU performances of this great track.

If you’re a Barenaked Ladies and/or Wallflowers fan, and especially if this year’s All in Good Time (BnL) and Women & Country (Jakob Dylan) releases weren’t enough to satiate you, then I know you’ll love the songs on this playlist.

1)  “I’m Looking Through You” – The Wallflowers

2)  “One Little Slip” – BnL

3)  “After the Blackbird Sings” (iTunes Originals Version) – The Wallflowers

4)  “The Other Day I Met A Bear” – BnL

5)  “Everything I Need” (iTunes Originals Version) – The Wallflowers

6)  “Easy” (acoustic) – BnL

7)  “6th Avenue Heartache” (Live) – The Wallflowers

8)  “La La La La Lemon” – BnL

9)  “God Says Nothing Back” (Demo Version) – The Wallflowers

10)  “Gimme Some Truth” – Jakob Dylan (feat. Dhani Harrison)

11)  “It’s All Been Done” (Live) – BnL

12)  “Whispering Pines” – Jakob Dylan

13)  “Sleepwalker” (iTunes Originals Version) – The Wallflowers

14)  “Oh Yoko” – BnL

15)  “Here He Comes (Confessions of a Drunken Marionette)” (Original Demo) – The Wallflowers

16)  “Into the Mystic” – The Wallflowers

17)  “Eat You Sleeping” – The Wallflowers

18)  “They Long to Be Close to You” – BnL

19)  “Letters from the Wasteland” (iTunes Originals Version) – The Wallflowers

20)  “Don’t Cry No Tears” (Live) – The Wallflowers

“7 8 9″ (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

By Chris Moore:

And now for another milestone here at the Laptop Sessions — my first Barenaked Ladies music video! This is a track from their 2008 album Snacktime. The opening track, “7 8 9” was an instant favorite of mine — even though it is children’s music, this is some of the best new music of the year and definitely deserves a listen.  Being the Barenaked Ladies fan I am, I actually bought the book that accompanies this disc.  The book is essentially an enlarged version of what can be found in the CD booklet, but it’s a really great children’s book to have on the shelf.  And illustrated by BnL’s own Kevin Hearn!  As if that wasn’t enough, the “7 8 9” music video is simply excellent, with a hilarious twist ending…  You have to search YouTube videos for it and watch it!

You may wonder why tonight’s written portion of this music blog post is is so brief. Well, that’s because I sat down just before dinner to work on my session and other https://guitarbucketlist.com work. This would have been great until… the ants invaded. One by one, Jim and I found ants throughout the kitchen, basement, and then found them all around the front corner of the yard. Many paper towels were lost in action this evening…

See you next session, hopefully when I’m not so terribly tired!!



Barenaked Ladies’ “All in Good Time” (2010) – The Weekend Review

By Chris Moore:

RATING:  5 / 5 stars

I’ll start by addressing the controversy surrounding the release of this album.

It’s only fair to clear the air, considering there’s been quite a lot of debate.  Although many will claim that it all began recently, I trace this issue back as early as 2006.

The issue I’m referring to, that I’m certain is on everyone’s minds, is the pressing question:

Is All in Good Time the eighth, ninth, or tenth album in the Barenaked Ladies’ not inconsiderable catalog?

(That’s what you thought I meant, right?)

To answer this question, you must revisit BnL’s past three releases: Are Me (2006), Are Men (2007), and Snacktime! (2008).  If you’re inclined to count them all as individual studio releases, then this year’s album is their tenth.  If you don’t count children’s albums, then it’s the ninth.  If you file the remaining two as an Are Me/Are Men double album proper, then we’re down to All in Good Time being the eighth.

You may be wondering, is it worth wasting energy considering such minutiae?

I think not.

However, as we stand at the precipice of a new decade of BnL being one of the most underrated and under-appreciated bands in contemporary rock music, it is worthwhile to take note of just how much they have achieved in recent history.

Believe me: the review may well afford you an enhanced understanding and appreciation of the band’s latest effort.

All in Good Time is an album of balance, an album of desperate searching and of confronting denials of satisfaction.  Contrary to stances I’ve read in the few professional reviews that have been written, All in Good Time is not a more serious departure from those fun-lovin, goofy Canadians we “used to know.”  Rather, any serious listener (i.e. no one under the employ of Rolling Stone‘s reviews department) would recognize that BnL’s catalog is deeper than “Be My Yoko Ono,” “If I Had $1,000,000,” “One Week,” and “Another Postcard.”  Particularly in the past ten years, this band has produced some of the most lyrically compelling and instrumentally impressive rock music available.

In many ways, All in Good Time borders on the concept-driven.  From the piano-laden lead-off single “You Run Away” to the deceptively upbeat track two “Summertime,” Ed Robertson and company quickly establish this as a post-traumatic album, a collection of songs that express various approaches toward disagreement and separation.

Please don’t misread my interpretation: I, for one, have found this album to have more depth than your average “breakup album.”  A comparison to the classics — Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, perhaps — just wouldn’t be right.  There is a certain strength of purpose here that other breakup albums simply cannot manage.  That may be why we’re drawn to them: as expressions of how it feels to cope with pain, loss, and even utter devastation of a lifestyle.

Instead, what I hear in Robertson, Kevin Hearn, Jim Creeggan, and even Tyler Stewart’s vocals is a certain solidarity we’ve come to expect from BnL.  When dealing with the most serious of trauma, their levity is woven in, even if it is more subtle than a song about laughing at funerals or running through a lawn sprinkler with your gym shorts on.  Consider Robertson’s line about crashing a party in “The Love We’re In,” to which he adds, “I’ll crash the plane” (referring, of course, to his own plane crash last year).

Additionally, not since their debut with 1992’s Gordon has such a sense of community been apparent in a BnL album.  More recently, particularly with those aforementioned past three releases, BnL has increased the number and degree of contributions from the so-called supporting members, namely Hearn, Creeggan, and Stewart.

In the wake of Steven Page’s departure (fine! I went and said it!), this is precisely what was needed to push the band to the next level in a career that has been marked by consistent evolution.

BnL's "All in Good Time" (2010)

BnL's "All in Good Time" (2010)

Starting the album with such a melancholy track as “You Run Away” — and sending it out as the first single — can only be classified as a bold, honest move on their part.  Either that or it indicates an utter lack of concern for marketing (which is well within their discretion, now, as an independent act).  Regardless, “You Run Away” builds up to such a degree that it’s a bit jolting to return to the beginning, so much does the second half rock out that you’re liable to forget just how slow the opening was.

“Summertime,” the second track, is framed by a big, beautifully crunchy riff and some vocal ba-da-ba’s on the outro that invoke seventies America.  Lyrically, Robertson asks, “How do we make it through the days?  How do we not cave in and bottom out?”  This is a tone-setter for the album as a whole, and as the choral response indicates, “Soon enough we’ll wake up from such a daze…”

See?  Even in an album imbued with such heartache and anger, BnL remains steadfast in their positive outlook.

The third track is one of Hearn’s three contributions, a slow-and-steady lament titled “Another Heartbreak.”  This is a song of accepting an inevitable failure, but, as Hearn sings, “it’s still a chance I had to take.”  This reminds me of that noble truth expressed by Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what” (Chapter 11).

“Four Seconds” is perhaps the quirkiest, and the quickest, BnL song yet — and that’s saying something.  When I first heard it, I was somewhat surprised that it had not been chosen as the single, especially considering the characteristic Robertson rapping.  It’s the kind of song that makes you happy to have a lyric booklet to refer to as you endeavor to learn the song and keep up.

Next comes a Creeggan track, “On the Lookout.”  This is a beautiful track, making full use of Creeggan’s smooth vocals for a fitting lead.  Like “Summertime,” there are all manner of interesting effects and instrumentation stretching out just beneath the surface.

“Ordinary” is strung together by Robertson’s intricate picking, but this is a track that clearly features the individual vocal and instrumental contributions of each of the other three members.  Like “You Run Away,” this track is an exemplar of the start-out-slow-and-build-up-to-full-speed arrangement.

The muted electric notes at the intro of “I Have Learned” provide an instant contrast with the acoustic “Ordinary.”  The result is a murky tone, as though there is something lurking beneath the surface.  Turns out that the “something” is a passive aggression.  Listen for the notes Robertson (or Hearn?) plays just before the minute and a half mark; if one’s temper being tweaked could be translated to electric guitar, this is what it would sound like.

As “Every Subway Car” rolls out, it becomes clear that this is not an album devoid of love songs.  The spray paint metaphor — the narrator’s handy work being brilliantly described as “urban gardens in bloom” — is classic Barenaked Ladies, and the track is catchy as hell.

Just in time, Hearn returns with a change of pace in “Jerome,” a ghost-town ballad through “Bloody Basin Road” to a locale populated by “bar brawlers and drifters, gamblers and gun fighters, ladies of the evening, and copper miners.”  This really isn’t a story so much as a song that establishes the proper setting for just about anyone to fill in the plot with their own ghosts.  Perhaps that is what Hearn intended: for his listeners to recall the memories that fill their own “jailhouses”…

The Barenaked Ladies have never produced a better angry rock song than “How Long.”  Lyrically and vocally, the song peaks at the middle as Robertson nearly screams, “I know you know I know you… so don’t say it!”  This song is so good that I can almost forget the “it’s for reals” line entirely… almost.

The band pulls back a notch for “Golden Boy,” but the passive aggressive undertones continue, punctuated by a distorted electric guitar under the vocals.  There are so many ways to read into and interpret the lyrics, that I won’t even begin.

“I Saw It” is, no arguments, one of the prettiest, most heartbreaking songs in the BnL canon.  In their twenty year career, Jim Creeggan has written a wide range of eccentric songs, but now that he has punched out several more straightforward tunes, it is clear that he can write with the best of his bandmates when the inspiration is there.  Of all the sad melodies on this album, “I Saw It” is unsurpassed.

Like ripping a band-aid, I’m just going to say it: “The Love We’re In” sounds, at least lyrically, like a song penned by early 2000’s John Mayer.  (Now, don’t get me wrong, as early John Mayer is, in this writer’s opinion, the only John Mayer worth listening to.)  To be fair, the comparison ends after the first verse is finished, but I had to note it.

An extremely brief forty-five minutes after the first piano note of “You Run Away,” the album comes in for a final run with “Watching the Northern Lights.”  Initially, I didn’t think much of this song, but the more I’ve listened, the more I’ve appreciated Hearn’s subtle genius and the more his lead vocal has crept into my mind and lingered there.

What more is there to say?  Instrumentally impressive, vocally brilliant, and lyrically interesting: All in Good Time is yet another Barenaked Ladies album worthy of making the best-of lists.  Don’t hold your breath for the “professionals” to acknowledge it, though: go out and listen for yourself.

“Pinch Me” (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

By Mike Fusco:

This song was done on the first take with the help of my bro Big Fusc, which was a lot of fun to do on the fly.  I heard this catchy pop song first in the Meriden Mall shopping and it was after I was into BNL, but before I realized “Wow, this song was THEM!”  And I cracked up at the line “I could hide out under there… I just made you say underwear”, which, comically enough, Jim JUST got this joke on Sunday night.  (how many years???  haha make sure to give him grief over that!)  This is from the album Maroon, a great album, and this song captures how I’m feeling right now… Not necessarily bad or down, actually very upbeat.

But,  I still feel like I’m walking around in a state of disbelief.  (so, Pinch Me!)  I hope you enjoy this acoustic cover me and my brother whipped up for the guitarbucketlist.com blog!

Leave me some love!

~mikey