Maroon

By PETER KANE, Q Magazine, October 2000.

With last year's One Week, Barenaked Ladies landed their Stairway To Heaven, their Freebird, their My Generation, helping to turn 1998's Stunt album into a multi-million seller in the States. It made a decent showing in the UK too. There's nothing quite as sharp or as hooky this time around, which might come as a relief to those who find the quintet's seemingly pathological need to be "wacky" hugely irritating. En 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 - Pinch Me and Tonight Is The Night That I Fell Asleep At The Wheel both being worth a special mention.

Rating: Three stars.