Barenaked Ladies

ABOUT BARENAKED LADIES

After more than three decades as the lead singer and guitarist for Barenaked Ladies, Ed Robertson has a routine when it comes time to start writing songs for a new album. “I tend to get ideas while I’m driving up to my lake house,” he says. “I record voice memos along the way, and then I listen back and try to make sense of them and mix and match the various ideas I’ve come up with. On a typical drive, I’m happy if I get six or seven—eight ideas would be a good drive.

“For this album,” he continues, “on my first writing trip I had 21 different song ideas. I thought, ‘Wow, this is really cool.’ Then I sat down to write, and I thought if I could finish one of them—get the verses, get the bridge, get the chorus in one day—then I’ll know this whole writing period is going to be good. And I finished eight songs. I sat down at 10 in the morning, and I looked up at 9:30 and I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t moved from the writing table. It was exciting. I’ve never felt that before.”

The results mark a new chapter for a band that’s sold more than 15 million albums, earned Grammy nominations and won multiple Juno Awards, and in 2018, were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In Flight, BNL’s eighteenth studio album, retains the dry wit and keen observation we expect from Robertson, bassist Jim Creeggan, keyboardist/guitarist Kevin Hearn and drummer Tyler Stewart, but adds a strong sense of maturing and lessons learned.

“I think as I age, I get less self-conscious,” says Robertson. “I had a goal to write simpler songs on this record, to not out-clever myself and be a little more direct, more emotionally present and honest. And when I listened to what I wrote, I heard what I’ve been talking about for the last couple of years—ruminations on gratitude, getting older, cancel culture. It was everything I’ve been thinking about, distilled into songs.”

While BNL’s last album, 2021’s Detour de Force, looked closely at the perils of contemporary, alternate reality media, In Flight offers a sense of joy and appreciation, exemplified in the first single, “Lovin’ Life,” in which they unironically sing “We’re lovin’ life/We love it so much that we wanna live it twice/We’re lovin’ life/We take it high, we take it low/We ride that rollercoaster anywhere it goes.” (Robertson wrote the song with Better Than Ezra’s Kevin Griffin and Steve Aiello of Thirty Second to Mars; elsewhere on the album, he co-wrote “I Am Asking You” with Donovan Woods).

“It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the firehose of bad news that we’re all pretty tuned into, and it is real,” says Robertson. “But I think it’s really important to remember to still be grateful. I guess I’m just trying to take in the negativity that surrounds us and learn about it and grow from it. ‘Lovin’ Life’ is about experiencing the positivity, because that’s there, too.”

He points to the recording of the song “Too Old” (“You don’t scare me a bit/I’m too old for this shit”) as a pivot point for In Flight. “The demo had this arpeggiated acoustic guitar and it was almost melancholy,” he says. “It was pretty, but It made it a little more distant from the message. When we started jamming it in pre-production, it turned into this Tom Petty-ish, guitar driven thing, it had a little bite. That was the moment where we were just letting shit happen organically and it felt great.”

Even at this point in a legendary career, Barenaked Ladies were open to altering their work habits and finding ways to better serve the new songs. “Typically in the past, we’ve done all the guitar overdubs, then we go in and do percussion, then do all the keyboard parts,” says Robertson. “With this record, we put up a song and said, ‘What does it need?,’ then put up the next song and finished song by song. So it demanded everyone’s attention all the time, as opposed to just concentrating on their parts or the week where they’re focusing on their instrument. That kept everybody invested and involved all the way through.”

Of course, a band known for hits like “One Week” and “If I Had $1,000,000” isn’t going to put out an album without humor—or Canadian Content. Kevin Hearn presented the group with “See the Tower,” a song telling the story of the structure that highlights the Toronto skyline. “It’s got a kind of sentimental approach, in all the right ways,” says Robertson. “It reminds me of a song on Sesame Street or a kid’s book about the CN Tower.”

Hearn contributed three more songs to In Flight, including one about local Toronto legend “The Peace Lady” and a biting fantasy about a real place in New York City, “The Dream Hotel.” Jim Creeggan co-wrote two of the tracks, adding the sweet devotion of “Just Wait” and “Wake Up” (on which he collaborated with Max Kerman of the Arkells). Robertson is confident that the album’s more thoughtful songs, like “Waning Moon” and “Fifty for a While,” will play just as well on stage as the comical material. “On the last tour, the songs that I thought we wouldn’t even try live ended up being real highlights of the show,” he says. “We ended up doing ‘Man Made Lake’ every night, and it was a real anchor point. ‘Live Well’ was another one—the most vulnerable, personal, raw, emotional songs. And it’s always been like that, we’ve always had ‘One Week,’ but the flip side is the reflective nature of ‘Pinch Me,’ and our audience accepts that from us.”

With the song “One Night,” Robertson even addresses this unique relationship BNL has with its fans. “We were trying to write something sexy that wasn’t just about a steamy night between two consenting adults,” he says, “but rather the magical connection that happens between a whole audience and a band. When it goes right—which it almost always does—for that ‘One Night’ it’s a very intense connection.”

Barenaked Ladies have become an institution, with a passionately dedicated audience (enough for them to headline their own cruises and have an ice cream flavor named after them) and a constant flow of new fans (plenty of whom discover the band through their theme song to the endlessly popular The Big Bang Theory). Maybe it’s just the passage of time, maybe the joy of getting back on the road after the COVID lockdown, but Ed Robertson has noticed a change in his own attitude which adjusted his tone on In Flight.

“I was talking to my daughter the other day,” he says, “and I told her that there would have been a me in the past that was standing on stage going, ‘Okay, seven more songs and then I get on the bus and go to the next city, and then it’s only six more shows before the end of the tour, when I get to go home and be with my family.’ Now I find myself looking out and going ‘We sold out Red Rocks—again!’ I feel very connected to how lucky we are that we still get to do this.

“I think this band is the underdog success story of the century,” Robertson continues. “Show me another band with a 35-year career, 15 million records sold, number one hits worldwide, and has never been on the cover of any major music publication. We’re a band that has committed to being who we are and what we are, and being as good as we can be—doing the best shows we can do, writing the best songs we can write—and we’ve done it for 35 years. I’m super proud of that.”

ABOUT GUSTER

Not long before the making of their new album Ooh La La, Guster celebrated three decades together as a band—a journey that’s included landing a series of hits on the Billboard charts, working with luminaries like Steve Lillywhite and Richard Swift, launching their own music festival, and amassing an ardent fanbase partly on the strength of their relentless touring and deeply communal live show. But despite reaching a milestone few musical acts ever come close to attaining, Guster’s ninth studio LP reveals a band fully in touch with the voracious creative energy that first inspired their formation. A major leap forward for lead vocalist Ryan Miller, guitarist Adam Gardner, drummer Brian Rosenworcel, and multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds, Ooh La La ultimately matches that wide-eyed spirit with a newly heightened sense of confidence, conviction, and commitment to the raw sincerity that’s made them so beloved.

“In all the time we’ve been together we’ve never really felt our age as a band—we’re still so hungry, still excited to create,” says Gardner. “A lot of people have told us they’re amazed at how democratic our process is, but I think that’s a big part of why we’re still able to open up this space where the ideas just flow. It also helps that we’ve built a relationship with our fans where there’s a real sense of trust and a desire for us to keep growing and keep pushing ourselves. It’s such a gift that allows us to be truly free, and to make whatever music we want to make.”

The follow-up to 2019’s Look Alive, Ooh La La marks a bold departure from its predecessor—a sonically adventurous and electronic-leaning effort made with producer Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Regina Spektor). This time around, the band worked mainly with producer Josh Kaufman (The National, The Hold Steady, Bonny Light Horseman), holing up at Isokon Studio in Woodstock and carving out a lush and expansive sound rich in acoustic guitars and graceful piano work. With additional production from Ron Aniello (Bruce Springsteen) and Rich Costey (Death Cab for Cutie, Of Monsters and Men), Ooh La La endlessly radiates an undeniable warmth, even as its songs delve into the more daunting aspects of living in modern times. “One of Josh’s great strengths is finding the heart of the song, which felt right for the world we live in,” says Rosenworcel. “When I listen back to the album now it feels like there’s depth everywhere—there’s not a moment where we strike a chord that isn’t meaningful to us. Nobody was going to accept a song that didn’t hit at a certain level, and it feels good to still have that passion more than 30 years into our career.”

Primarily mixed by Peter Katis (The National, Kurt Vile), Ooh La La takes its title from a lyric in lead single “Keep Going”—a lovely encapsulation of the album’s emotional undercurrent, telegraphing an irrepressible joy in the face of turmoil and unrest. “Most of these songs were written against the backdrop of what felt like an apocalypse,” says Miller. “It was such a transformative time, and we were dealing with a lot of existential questions about what it means to be a father, a husband, a creative person in the midst of all the chaos.” The only track composed with an outside co-writer, “Keep Going” was sparked from a session between Miller and songwriter Rob Kleiner, later emerging as a shimmering piece of alt-pop lit up in luminous harmonies and gauzy guitar tones. “One thing we’ve continually done as a band is acknowledge what’s going on in our world but still bring some positivity to the music,” says Gardner. “We’re always going to be real about what’s happening, but we still want to leave people with a feeling of hope.”

Looking back on the making of Ooh La La, the members of Guster point to a heady and hypnotic number called “All Day” as a particularly charmed moment. “As soon as that song arrived in the room, it felt like it knew exactly what it needed to be,” Reynolds says of “All Day” (one of two songs recorded with Aniello and Costey at Guilford Sound in Vermont). “My feeling is that it’s our job as a band to stay engaged and do the work, to follow what feels exciting and recognize that we’re never totally in control of the results. So when a song shows up and already feels fully formed, it’s an incredible thing to watch unfold.” Born during a jam session at Gardner’s parents’ house early on in the writing process, “All Day” also wholly fulfills the band’s intention of infusing a certain unabashed earnestness into the lyrical element of Ooh La La. “I remember stumbling onto those lyrics and feeling so connected to them and thinking to myself, ‘This might be one that we’ll be still playing 15 years from now,’” Miller recalls. “There’s nothing sneaky or clever about it; it’s completely direct and the emotion of it just shines through.”

For Guster, the open-hearted receptivity that catalyzed the creation of songs like “All Day” has served as a touchstone throughout the band’s history. But while their audience has grown exponentially since Guster got their start playing in dorm rooms at Tufts University in 1991, they’ve sustained an extraordinarily strong connection with their fanbase over the years. To that end, one of Guster’s most cherished endeavors is the On The Ocean Festival—an annual event that began in 2017 in Gardner’s adopted hometown of Portland, Maine, with a reunion-like atmosphere and an eclectic mix of performers including Bahamas, Lucius, Madison Cunningham, and Shakey Graves. “We feel lucky that we’ve created a dynamic where there’s no real separation between us and our fans—we’re all part of a community, and it’s theirs just as much as it’s ours,” says Gardner. “One of the main reasons we’re still a band is the fans who’ve come to see us for years, the people who show us the tattoos they’ve gotten with our lyrics,” Miller adds. “It inspires us to stay creative and stay fearless, instead of just making the same record over and over. Everything we do is in service of that connection, and at this point I’d say we’re definitely lifers.”