What: Barenaked Ladies with Ladies of the Canyon
When: Wednesday
Where: Farquhar Auditorium, University of Victoria
Rating: 4/5
When the Barenaked Ladies are in sync, it’s a beautiful thing.
The Toronto group relies upon a lot of moving parts to make their concerts tick, from off-the-cuff comedy to inspired musicianship, and that can make for as many wildly successful nights as sophomoric strikeouts. I’ve seen them hit the mark before at the Royal Theatre, as they did during their early ’90s Gordon heyday, and I've seen them stumble and fall in 2010 at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. BNL concerts literally run the gamut.
The band’s performance Wednesday at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium narrowed the gap between the two halves. It resembled the BNL shows of old, even without departed co-frontman Steven Page. The band has made corrections to its set in his four-year absence, nuts and bolts additions or subtractions which work a large portion of the time. It wasn’t perfect, but after 25 years as a group, the band is more the meeting expectations.
That said, it was still surprising to see that many ironic hip-hop elements — the band’s bread-and-butter during its pre-fame years — are still in play. Drummer Tyler Stewart triggered the occasional sample, and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Hearn laid down a few digital scratches. Singer-guitarist Ed Robertson took care of the beatboxing and rapping — when he was wasn't joining Stewart and bassist Jim Creegan for the occasional b-boy dance routine.
BNL stopped short of covering Public Enemy’s Fight the Power, a staple from their era of cassettes and baggy shorts, but they captured the middle ground between their old-school elements and newfound influences with a spirited two-hour performance.
The band was at the service of 900 fans Wednesday at UVic. Pinch Me was an early highlight, but it got lost between a run of new songs from their 2013 album, Grinning Streak. Soon, the band was back in one of its famously joking moods. Robertson riffed on Toronto’s ice storm (which he parlayed into a euphemism for crack cocaine) and ad-libbed a few verses set to a Stewart beat, to the delight of the audience.
Hearn’s bandmates shredded him often for his unusual looking shirt. “This is what happens when you hang out in Tofino,” he said, before getting some payback of his own. “Speaking of shirts,” Hearn quipped, gazing at the gingham-style cowboy shirts being worn by Creegan and Robertson, “are you guys going to a picnic?”
The standout, from a pure comedy perspective, was Stewart. He made an inappropriate — though incredibly hilarious — remark about the opening act, Montreal neo-folk group Ladies of the Canyon, and when he was allowed to chime in on the microphone from his his drum riser, it was almost always with perfect comedic timing. Robertson said he had no choice but to ban him from making any further comments, after Stewart interrupted Hearn to inform him that a Sasquatch is “a timepiece from the middle of Canada.”
If Stewart carried his weight in comedy, Hearn was equal to the task musically. His voice, however, is far too thin and reedy to be considered a suitable replacement for Page, and his verses during One Week were handled poorly (though Hearn did, ironically, shine on the a cappella Sound of Your Voice).
From a musical perspective, Hearn was everywhere: He played banjo, accordion, piano, and numerous guitars, offering a tasty electric solo during the extended jam, Keepin’ it Real. Robertson, as always, was hard to miss. Everything ran through him, and he was superb. Never once did he appear to be anything other than right where he is destined to be.
Stewart and Robertson brought home the evening in fine style with covers of hits from Avicii, Katy Perry, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Lorde, and Miley Cyrus. The tribute set/comedy routine got the fans on their feet for the first time, where they remained fixed as Stewart went to work in the night's final encore.
“My microphone ban has been lifted long enough for me to bring you some rock roll!” he screamed, before tearing into Alcohol. “I love you more than I did the week before,” he sang, while Robertson hammered away behind him on drums. Good? A harder rock direction for the band wouldn't be out of order, let's put it that way.
Stewart then offered a very convincing version of Blister in the Sun, and an absolutely astonishing take on Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. And with that, they were gone, leaving only smiles in their wake.
Twenty-five years after they got their start, that's worth its weight in comedy gold.
