Hello, everyone! It’s time for another album review, and today I’m reviewing the newest Barenaked Ladies album, In Flight.

If my reviews have felt more brief than usual recently, there are a few reasons for that. The short answer is that I’ve been busy. The slightly longer answer is that I started college last month, and I’m still working part-time, and there are other things I do with my time as well aside from college, work, and working on my reviews. And I just don’t want to feel like I have to understand every line of every song or give a super detailed analysis of every review I write. At the end of the day I’m writing about how I personally feel about the album, and I think it’s okay if I keep the reviews brief. And it’s not that that’s necessarily anything new, because it’s not like I was previously trying to make sure I understood everything being said on every album I reviewed … but still, I feel like I’ve kept my reviews a bit more brief recently than before, because I’ve been super busy.

But there’s another big reason why I’ve been very busy recently, and that’s because I recently listened to every Barenaked Ladies album multiple times each. For a while they’d been one of those bands I wanted to listen to more, as I’d heard some good things about them. And I thought it would be a good idea to do that before reviewing this new album of theirs.

And I’d say I’m becoming a fan of the Barenaked Ladies. In fact, I’d call myself a fan already. Their early albums have a lot of personality to them and are full of creativity! And while the early part of their discography has its moments that don’t really work for me, I think they have a few legit great albums!

But I also think it’s been decades since they’ve released a great album … and not only that, but for the past two decades it feels like they’ve consistently been releasing mediocre albums. So, I can’t say I had particularly high expectations going into this new album … but I wanted to give it a fair chance, so how do I feel about it after multiple listens?

Well, it’s my least favourite Barenaked Ladies album to date … and I’m not sure whether or not I’m surprised by that, but I certainly didn’t expect to like the album, and I don’t.

And considering how little there is here that really interests me personally, it makes for a pretty easy album to review, to the point where I considered just making this a mini review … but after listening to as much Barenaked Ladies as I did, I just felt like a full-length review would make more sense … even though I don’t think I’ll have a ton to say.

As always, this is all just my opinion, so just because I don’t like this album doesn’t mean it’s ‘objectively bad’.

So, going back to what I was saying about how creative their early albums are … well, this album doesn’t feel nearly as creative to me, and it doesn’t feel as unique to Barenaked Ladies, and it feels like this could have been made by pretty much anyone. And that very well could just be a me thing, but that’s how I personally hear it.

The album opens with “Lovin’ Life”, which features the really cringey line, ‘It’s like a pizza and we want another slice,’ and also, ‘It’s even sweeter than a watermelon slice.’ This song is followed by “One Night”, and both these songs just feel like a million other songs I’ve heard before, and while I respect that they seem to be trying to make some uplifting songs here, to me personally these songs just feel incredibly boring, and at points quite annoying, with messy production and vocal melodies that do pretty much nothing for me.

“Enough Time” and “What Do We Need?” aren’t bad, and I kind of like some of the lyrical ideas here, but musically these songs feel incredibly uninteresting to me, and the former has production that I don’t really like, with the bass sounding kind of awkward in the mix and the guitar at points feeling too quiet.

And speaking of production I don’t like, “Just Wait” has bass that overpowers the mix, and handclap percussion that feels really out of place with the way it’s produced.

The next few songs are some of the better songs on the album, although none of them are anywhere close to being songs that I like, and the line, ‘I’ll come collect you’ is one of the cringiest moments on the album … and then there’s a really bad stretch of tracks starting with “See the Tower” with its very repetitive melody, and then “Wake Up” starts with a really annoying synth and some percussion that gets really distracting … and from this point on there’s so little about the song that really stands out to me and I just want it to end.

After “Clearly Lost”—which is another song that just makes me want to listen to some early Barenaked Ladies instead—we get my least favourite song on the entire album, “The Dream Hotel”, which is … quite something.

“The Dream Hotel” features a story that I don’t understand at all … and while that’s very likely a me thing, the imagery doesn’t really work for me as I have no idea what is being described in this song. Somebody’s staying at the dream hotel, but one person doesn’t want to be there, or something like that. Again, I’m probably being totally unfair to this, because maybe I’m just not putting in the effort to understand it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot more to this … but I’m just talking about how I hear it, and I don’t like this song at all, also partially because of the incredibly boring composition and annoying repetition, and the messy production.

“I Am Asking You To” has some nice vocal melodies, and it’s a nice album highlight late in the track list … I mean, it’s nowhere near as good as a lot of the songs they released decades ago, but it’s still by far my favourite song here, especially because the snare sounds really good!

There’s some interesting storytelling on the closing track, but musically the song just really bores me, and overall this track just doesn’t do a whole lot for me.

Overall, I barely found anything about this that makes me want to go back to it. And I’m not saying this to be mean or anything, I’m just being honest about how I feel. Music is subjective.

But to me personally, this just feels so much less creative than their early music, and it doesn’t feel unique to Barenaked Ladies. And I also find the production and melodies a lot weaker.

But feel free to let me know what you think in the comments. For me, it’s a 4/10, but I’m curious to hear other opinions.

Also, I know I didn’t go into as much detail as I could have, but the album just doesn’t give me a ton to say, and if I hadn’t listened to all of their other albums before this review, I’d probably just be making it a mini review—in fact, even after listening to all those albums, I considered making this a mini review because it just doesn’t give me much to say.

I could have said more about this, but, to quote the album, ‘I haven’t got time, oh no. No, I haven’t got enough time.’ But that’s not really the real reason … because really, I just have other things I’d rather do with my time.

But again, I’m curious to hear what you think about this album, and thanks for reading!

Final Thoughts
Rating: 4/10
Favourite Tracks: “I Am Asking You To”
Least Favourite Tracks: “See the Tower”, “The Dream Hotel”