By
Ian Caruth
Grade: D+
Pop music arguably hit its lowest creative point in the mid-1970s, when a surfeit of saccharine, syrupy pop-clogged the airwaves until the Godsent punk revolution.
Unfortunately, like everything 70s, simpering pop music is experiencing a massive revival - how else to explain the likes of Jewel, Matchbox 20 and the Barenaked Ladies enjoying a wave of inexplicable and deeply saddening popularity?
Canada's shame, the Barenaked Ladies, writes songs so bland and safe that they seem to be inventing a new genre: "unrock." Their jangly acoustic arrangements, cliched, melodramatic themes and bleating vocals have all the rock-and-roll drive and conviction of a campfire "Kumbaya" sing-along - but are glossed with a hideously poppy sheen that appeals to hordes of "alternative" listeners, their senses dulled by years of ham-handed mope rock.
With their sixth LP, the Ladies spew forth more of the same pop-drivel that made their 1998 release Stunt - a quadruple-platinum seller. This time out, the arrangements have traces of simplistic flavor-of-the-month dance and hip-hop production tacked onto the typical, undistinguished jangle-folk.
Aside from the synthesized and sampled drumbeats on several songs, the album is virtually indistinguishable from Stunt, lacking only the soccer-mom friendly rap of "One Week," the band's inescapable 1998 No.1 hit. Their smarmy humor, earnest emoting and melancholy storytelling, coupled with the band's straightforward melodies and polished harmonies, make the songs guaranteed radio favorites, without the work involved in breaking any new creative ground.
The album's highlight is "Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel," a reworking of the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-four," as the darkly humorous story of a man and his catastrophic car wreck. The understated horns and deadpan vocal delivery distinguish the song as greater than its unbearable album-mates, but not enough to lift the album from the bottom of the pop barrel.
