To steal a line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Barenaked Ladies are big. Really big. You won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big they are, although the number 12 million—which is roughly the number of albums the Ladies have sold in their 19 years together—might give you an idea. And that’s why, on a groggy Monday morning, it’s disconcerting to receive a phone call from one of the Ladies with none of the usual record-industry ministrations that tend to come with an interview of this magnitude, and which frankly seem designed to intimidate the journalist. No fancy third-party introductions, no time limits, just a voice on the other end announcing, “Hi, this is Ed Robertson.” What gives? The singer-guitarist chuckles, and explains, “Well, we’re an indie band again.”

Right. After a relationship with Reprise Records that began with Gordon in 1992, BNL chose not to renew its contract with the industry giant, and released 2005’s Barenaked for the Holidays on its own Desperation Records. What followed was something of a creative second wind for the band, resulting in the 29-song bonanza that makes up both Barenaked Ladies Are Me—released last September as a 13-track single album—and its follow-up Barenaked Ladies Are Men, which goes on sale next week. This is the final manifestation of the ambitious and dizzying Barenaked Ladies Are”¦ release schedule. Twenty-seven of the songs were made available as a limited special edition of the first album in September. A memory stick containing all 29 could be purchased at concerts, on a version dubbed Barenaked Ladies Are USB, and there have been a variety of downloadable permutations in the meantime. As the band prepares for a Canadian tour, it also closes the book on a collection of songs that it ultimately views as one, big multiformat experiment. Relaxed and gregarious as he speaks to the Straight from his Toronto home, Robertson sees a natural connection between the outfit’s conspicuous surge in productivity and its current “freedom”.

“We usually write a good deal more songs than what end up on the record,” he explains, “usually four or five. This time, not having a label in place and no one telling us really what to do, we just kept writing.” Further to that, the Ladies found themselves viewing the past with a fresh perspective, a reawakening that Robertson pinpoints to a moment in a dressing room in Boston. “Tyler [Stewart, drummer] had made a little iTunes play list of songs that had never made it on the records. A couple of B-sides and demos, and we were about halfway through listening to it, and [bassist] Jim [Creeggan] said, ”˜I think this is my favourite record of ours.’”

Robertson laughs before continuing, “We realized that in the thick of the studio, in trying to eliminate songs because they don’t hang with other songs, well, that’s just really fucked. We should just make the song as good as we can and put it out there!”

Robertson is serious about discarding the conventional approach to recording an album. “I don’t think people listen to records the way that you and I listened to records when we were growing up,” he asserts, “where you say, ”˜I’m going to listen to Harvest front to back.’ They take your songs and they throw it on shuffle, and they hear you, and they hear Beck, and then the Foo Fighters. That’s how I listen to music now, too.”

He even admits that the sequencing of the two albums was relatively arbitrary.

“We really saw them as two halves of a whole,” he says. “Not the real record and then the other songs. In fact, I think I like the second half more than the first. My kids like the second half better, too.”

Even without a paradigm shift in consumer listening habits, it would be difficult to imagine an effective way of organizing such a sweeping piece of work. Taken as a whole, the two albums cover a remarkable range of styles, from the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill–style goof “Everything Had Changed” to Latin lounge on “Beautiful”; from Dixieland jazz in “Fun & Games” to singer-guitarist Steven Page apparently channelling Mario Lanza during the bridge of “Running Out of Ink”. The Ladies’ abiding gift for creating gently melodic folk rock is there too, of course, in songs like keyboardist Kevin Hearn’s “Serendipity”, which sounds like R.E.M. covering the Monkees, and there’s plenty of the band’s fail-safe power pop, married—in the case of “Something You’ll Never Find”—to Keith Moon bombast. If that’s not enough diversity for you, there’s also “Sound of Your Voice”, which is Queen by another name (“That solo is so Brian May,” Robertson gushes), and the spooky reincarnation of Fleetwood Mac on the wonderful “Easy”. In either case, a reinvigorated and playful BNL falls on the right side of pastiche.

“At this point,” Robertson reasons, “we’re not afraid to wear our influences on our sleeves a little more directly. I remember when we were recording ”˜Thanks That Was Fun’, off of the Greatest Hits package. When we got to recording the backups in the bridge, Steve was like, ”˜Fuck, it sounds like the Eagles!’” Robertson giggles, as if he’s still surprised by his own response. “I was like, ”˜Yeah, but it’s good Eagles, right?’”