BARENAKED LADIES ARE MEN HITS STREETS

The Barenaked Ladies have released ‘Barenaked Ladies are Men’ their next installment of 2006’s ‘Barenaked Ladies are Me.’ The first part, which spawned the hits ‘Easy’ and ‘Wind it Up’ was recorded at the same time and the band decided to break up the album into two parts. In what was clearly an industry first, the band released both albums on a Flash Drive which allowed fans of the band to get all 29 songs from both albums.

We caught up with The Barenaked Ladies to discuss the recording process, being secluded and why they had to make a change from their previous recording studio in Los Angeles.

[Ed Robertson] “Well it was kind of a secluded record. Steve and I wrote a bunch of the stuff on my cottage on a lake a couple of hours north of Toronto, and then we recorded it at Steve’s farm house about an hour and a half north east of Toronto. There was a lot of seclusion on this record.” [Tyler Stewart] “Absolutely. And not to mention that we were in rooms, like tiny closest with no light, and with our mouths bound. And we weren’t fed for days, so that seclusion brings out a lot of creativity in people. There’s really not much else to do than to play your parts properly.” [Robertson] “The thing is we’re all so busy, and we all have families so the best way for us to work is to go hide somewhere. Whether that be writing or recording. We came to LA to make the last record and LA is a distracting place to work.”

Throughout the album one can’t help but notice recurring themes of love, politics and a heavy anti war sentiment that permeates ‘The Barenaked Ladies are Men.’

[Ed Robertson] “Yeah, there’s a… I think there’s a lot of themes on this record, with 29 songs. There’s some romance, there’s some politics, there’s some anti-war sentiment. There’s very little pro-war sentiment on this record.” [Tyler Stewart] “That’s true, definitely. I think it’s hard to make a pro-war record, for us anyway because we’re a bunch of Canadians. I think also the contiuation of themes from Everything To Everyone that the personal is political. Sooner or later you have to make a choice in what you believe in, and that comes right down to your personal life as well. We’ve all taken strides over the last few years to be more involved in our lives, more involved in the band and more involved in the world, and I think that shows on the album.”

‘The Barenaked Ladies are Men’ was released February 7th and the band is set to hit the road in support of the record. The Barenaked Ladies have also released their latest video for ‘Wind it Up’ which can be seen on the band’s website and is a montage of fan videos sent in for the song.