Maroon
- Barenaked Ladies
- Band Name: Barenaked Ladies
- Record Label: Reprise
- Release Date: Sep 12, 2000
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On their latest, Maroon, they've delivered that too rare musical commodity: a disc overflowing with potential hits.
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Maroon is BNL's grown-up album, still full of clever wordplay and winking couplets, but also dealing with dark and sometimes disarming matters of adulthood.
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80An album far better than the last. It's full of clever, upbeat songs and comes close to blending the lyrical and melodic brilliance of their first album, Gordon, with the energy of their live album, Rock Spectacle.
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70A borderline adult-contemporary sound that's catchy and exuberant enough to gloss over the intermittently dark verse.
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But there are more moments when all-too-human messes lurk beneath the veneer of producer Don Was' perfect pop tracks, moments when the relentless sunniness of the music is pierced by sober themes (the last song, "Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel," is a graphic account of car-wreck carnage) and dark, psychological-profile assessments. In turning the snarky level down a notch, Robertson and Page haven't sacrificed the band's good-time giddiness -- they've just opened things up a bit.
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60Unfortunately seems to lack that goofiness that had previously made them one of rock-and-roll's coolest nerd bands.
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Maroon is simply charming. It's not outstanding, but the Barenaked Ladies do keep their self-defined whimsicality top-notch.
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60En masse, Maroon's brisk acoustic rock settings and the hyperactive rush of words can still have you reaching for the skip button. But broken into bite-size chunks, its bitterly humorous dissection of the fumbling absurdities of modern life and death is not without pathos.
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Throughout Maroon, though, producer Don Was mercifully dispenses with mawkishness in favor of a theatrical approach tailored for arena consumption.
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50In a nutshell, if you liked the previous stuff, you'll like this... it has as much right to a place in the world as Huey Lewis and the News ever did.
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40Barenaked Ladies play it straight with mixed results...
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30Buying the latests CD from a novelty act is like sitting on the same whoopee cushion twice. [Oct 2000, p.180]
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OK, here's some track titles - 'Too Little Too Late', 'Never Do Anything', 'Pinch Me' - and, guess what, THEY ALL FUCKING SUCK! Not just Weller, Ashcroft or Belle & Sebastian sucky but Mike & The Mechanics, Tin Machine and, yes, Hootie And The Blowfish sucky.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 9
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Mixed: 0 out of 9
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Negative: 1 out of 9
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BillS9A stunningly good collection of mature, mellow, though-provoking songs. Move over One Week, this is BNL at their best.
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Steph9
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SamP.10This is ****