Product Description

STUNT is another tightly wound, witty, melodic Barenaked Ladies album, with songs that range from dangerously manic to contemplative and nearly sweet. The slightly psychotic whiteboy rap on "One Week" employs wacky lyrical ingenuity, withsuch lines as "Hot like wasabi when I bust rhymes/Big like LeAnn Rimes". On the other hand, the charm of "In The Car" lies in its twangy alt-country sound and a sense of nostalgiafor a more naive time. Barenaked Ladies' lyrics can veer awfully close to being precious, but they avoid crossing the line with a magical combination of intelligence, biting cynicism, and a refusal to take themselves too seriously.

Track Listing

1. One Week
2. It's All Been Done
3. Light Up My Room
4. I'll Be That Girl
5. Leave
6. Alcohol
7. Call And Answer
8. In The Car
9. Never Is Enough
10. Who Needs Sleep
11. Told You So
12. Some Fantastic
13. When You Dream

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31860 in Music
• Released on: 1999-02-22
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
For the fans, Stunt - Special Edition collects together a handful of "live favourites"--a term that's usually used to describe a track that's just too dull to be a single, but the band insists on playing anyway. Not so, here--the originals of the live renditions on Stunt - Special Edition date back well before the Barenaked Ladies broke internationally with "One Day", to a period where their brand of quirky, but assuredly mainstream college rock was making huge waves in their Canadian homeland. It's the breezy "If I Had $1,000,000" that most closely resembles the comical tumble of "One Day", with the audience screaming back the lyric "I bought a football team to prove that I'm a man/ I guess I shouldn't tell 'em that I like Duran Duran," like clever-clever lyrics are going out of fashion. Which, of course, they're not. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

wow
You have to hear this album, if only for "if I had a million dollars". That song could make anyone smile. And everyone wants a monkey...

Wow
Someone elsewhere on this site described this album as "oddly addictive". Wow. Couldn't have put it better.

I was a fan of BNL many years ago, but lost this album I've just bought another copy and I've fallen in love all over again - I literally can't get it out of my head, and walk down the street singing along.
The songs are outrageously catchy (It's All Been Done, Alcohol), thoughfully beautiful (When You Dream), or just plain stupid - but in the best way possible (One Week).
The bonus disc is also a great collection - Brian Wilson is classic BNL, and I challenge anyone not to grin like a loon when listening to the live version of If I Had $1000000.

So a fantastic feel-good album, every song intelligent and well written. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Bit of a publicity stunt...
For me, Stunt marks the beginning of BNL's decline. There's no doubting the success of the album and the fact it helped the band crack America, spawning their No.1 hit single 'One Week' (as an aside they did a far superior rap-based song called 'Fight The Power' for The Coneheads film soundtrack a few years earlier).

But there is a definite feeling that in striving for this mass appeal, something of their trademark intimacy and quirkiness is lost...

If ever evidence was needed of a band entering MOR territory, just listen out for the 'It's All Been Done' riff appearing on recent Argos catalogue adverts!

The only real song of note is ballad 'Call And Answer' which announces Kevin Hearn as a more than adequate replacement for former bandmate Andy Creeggan, and recaptures some of the old BNL magic we'd become so accustomed to.

I realise I'm spitting into the wind against such a deluge of five star recommendations (no doubt my review will be safely tucked away near the end somewhere), but I'm sticking to my guns on this one...