I don\u2019t know who assembled this compilation, Barenaked Ladies\u2019 first rarities album, but they sure did a poor job. Some bands will use an album like this to compile obscure live material. Others will fill their archive releases with demos and outtakes, or they\u2019ll compile the best of their B-sides. Stop Us If You’ve Heard This One Before<\/i> tries to be all of these things at once and as a result becomes a huge mess. Remixes, B-sides, demos, and live material all sit awkwardly next to each other. There is no effort to be comprehensive; many of the selections in each category are chosen seemingly at random.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s go through each category in turn. First off: the demos. From a historical point of view, \u201cThe Old Apartment\u201d is the most interesting, since it began life as a ballad before being transformed into a balls-to-the-wall rocker. Unfortunately, when listening to the song as it was originally conceived, I can only be convinced that the band made the right call, since it\u2019s deathly boring in this form. \u201cSecond Best\u201d is a good song, and its demo makes for a nice listen. But is there anything about it that might make it a viable alternative to the studio version on Everything To Everyone<\/i>? No, not really. It pretty much sounds the same but just a tad bit worse in every department. \u201cLong While\u201d has a nice tune and bobs along cheerfully. It doesn\u2019t seem to be available in any other form, so unlike the other demos it is neither boring nor useless and therefore easily the best track in this category.<\/p>\n
Now we move on to the live tracks. First off, there\u2019s a cover of the Beastie Boys classic \u201cShake Your Rump.\u201d Of all the covers that could have been picked, why did they choose this one? I can\u2019t imagine anybody seriously preferring this cover to the original. It\u2019s just a novelty; fun to hear once, and completely unnecessary to hear again. It\u2019s not even performed all that well. There\u2019s an early live version of \u201cSame Thing\u201d which has a few different lyrics than the completed version. Like with \u201cSecond Best,\u201d it\u2019s not as good the studio version, so what\u2019s the point? \u201cTeenage Wasteland\u201d is kind of a curious song. It\u2019s highly energetic and the lyrics are quite entertaining. But the memorability level of the track is non-existent. It moves through several different sections and not a single one catches my ear in any way. <\/p>\n
Next there\u2019s the outtake\/B-sides category. All of these songs were completed studio recordings that didn\u2019t make it onto an album at the time. But three of them were completely re-recorded a couple years later, so you\u2019ve probably already heard “Adrift,” “Half A Heart,” and “I Can, I Will, I Do”. And once again, there\u2019s nothing about these versions that make them stand out when compared to the versions you already know. As for the songs people haven\u2019t heard before, only \u201cYes Yes Yes\u201d is good. It rocks, has some lovely vocal harmonies and some pretty solid hooks. \u201cI Don\u2019t Get It Anymore,\u201d on the other hand, is straight-up awful. One of the most boring, bland songs BNL has ever done. The chorus is repetitive, the bridge seems like a placeholder, the instrumental sections seem like they\u2019re missing a lead instrument, and the whole arrangement is just plodding and lazy. And as if to add insult to injury, it\u2019s positioned as the opening track on the album!<\/p>\n
Last, and most certainly least, there\u2019s a remix of \u201cOne Week.\u201d Pretty much all this remix does is add a ridiculously stupid beat-box loop behind the regular song and repeat a few sections more than they were in the original. It\u2019s not like the song itself is bad, but I can\u2019t imagine something more pointless than this. Do they seriously think that this is the kind of thing fans were looking for in a rarities compilation? What a colossally useless waste of three minutes.<\/p>\n
The only people who\u2019d be interested in this album are hardcore fans. Yet there\u2019s hardly anything here to interest those fans. What\u2019s especially frustrating is that BNL has plenty of great non-album tracks that they could have put on here but didn\u2019t. Where\u2019s \u201cTrust Me,\u201d \u201cThe Ballad Of Gordon,\u201d \u201cInline Bowline,\u201d or any of the material from their early demo tapes? Nearly everything in the band\u2019s vaults that would have made for a good rarities compilation is excluded. \u201cYes Yes Yes\u201d and \u201cLong While\u201d are alright songs, and they save this album from being completely worthless, but even those hardly measure up to the highlights on BNL\u2019s regular releases. A useless remix, redundant versions of songs you already know, and unheard songs that deserved to remain that way, all combine to make this album a staggering waste of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":31020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5986],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-42703","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-barenaked-ladies","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42703"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}