Barenaked Ladies – Talk To The Hand: Live In Michigan

Barenaked Ladies – Talk To The Hand: Live In Michigan / 2007 Shout! Factory / http://www.bnlmusic.com /

I have been a fan of the Barenaked Ladies for well over a decade, ever since I first heard “The Old Apartment” on Muchmusic (back before it became a lame MTV knockoff here in the states). Their artist focus show (which had a half hour dedicated to videos by the band) turned me on to “Enid” and “If I Had 1,000,000”. Hell, even my mother got into the band after watching these video shows. While it is my opinion that the band’s stock slipped slightly in the late nineties and early oughts with “One Week” and other tracks of that ilk, I still feel that BNL are a more than capable band. With “Talk To The Hand”, the band’s first concert DVD, my thoughts are made into reality. Rather than being just a live show, the song selection on “Talk To The Hand” is strong enough that individuals could conceivably use the audio track from the DVD as a greatest hits.

This means that all of BNL’s major songs are present – whether it be “Be My Yoko Ono”, “Brian Wilson”, “Pinch Me”, or even “One Week”. The fifteen songs that are on “Talk To The Hand” have a number of songs that may not be known by an American audience – “Easy”, “For You”, and “Sound of Your Voice” are all present on the DVD. The footage is beyond sharp and the audio is essentially at a studio level with random individuals in the audience interjecting at moments. The extras present on “Talk To The Hand” make this even more of a value purchase: beyond the footage itself, there is a DTS 5.1 audio mix, a sound check performance of “Angry People”, and a number of different interviews and non-music segments that will ensure fans have quite a few hours of viewing present in this DVD.

The Barenaked Ladies have been around forever, and like many bands that have been around forever, they could tour practically any place in the world and have a great turnout due to their previous hits. However, the vitality that is present in the performance of all of the tracks during “Talk To The Hand” shows that the band could have one long run ahead of them. Buy this album, sing along to all the songs that you can remember, and check around and see if a new album or material is on the horizon from the BNL.

Top Tracks: Brian Wilson, Bank Job

Rating: 6.9/10