Snacktime

We Say...

Review by Kristina Feliciano

I’ve always thought of the Barenaked Ladies as a novelty band. Songs like 1990's “Be My Yoko Ono” or their 2007 hit “If I Had a Million Dollars” were essentially jokes set to music, with the humor falling somewhere between average dude and archetypal middle-class white person (as in, “If I had a million dollars/ We wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner/ But we would eat Kraft Dinner/ Of course we would/ We’d just eat more/ And buy really expensive ketchup with it.") To me, though BNL are beloved by many — the band has been going strong for some 20 years — they’re a little annoying. But it turns out that what seems corny in records aimed at adults is actually super-charming in the context of a kids’ disc. On Snacktime, BNL’s first foray into music making for ankle biters, the Canadian quintet combine kidly goofiness with parental teachiness — as well as their own undeniable gift for spinning winning melodies — and wind up coming across as the cleverest thing ever.

Any form of children’s entertainment that activates the imagination is aces in my book, and Snacktime excels in this area. Lines like “I can eat pork till the cows come home,” in “I Don’t Like,” or “Wish I could speak with my dog/ Right now it’s just a monologue,” in “Wishing” are both giggle-inducing and, for a child who is still negotiating the wonders of the English language, thought-provoking. Even when BNL, whose members all have children of their own, are overtly instructional, they keep it goofy and weird, so that they’re more like you’re cool-but-caring older brother than your didactic dad. On “Crazy ABC’s,” they explain that “g” is for gnarly” and “o” is for “ouija board,” while the jazzy “Food Party” is a sort of meet-and-greet among various kinds of treats (“I’m Bitter. I’m bitter like bitter greens and radicchio and orange peels. I’m Bitter, and I don’t even wanna be here,” complains one of the party’s “guests”).

As if to keep themselves entertained, BNL hop from one musical style to the next, sound-checking everyone from Style Council (“Humungous Tree”), to the Pointer Sisters (it doesn’t take much of a leap to get from Snacktime’s “Drawing” to the Sisters’ “Jump”), to REM (the plaintive “My Big Sister,” about a boy who loves his big sis but doesn’t want to have to wear her hand-me-down coat). In fact, packing 24 tracks in just under 55 minutes, Snacktime changes its tune often enough to keep young ones’ attention from drifting.

How to explain the band’s name, though, is all on you.