Their Merriness Goes Around

Barenaked Ladies’ pleasure principle is grounded in a firm belief in mirth as an intoxicant. With the requisite yuk and an occasional titter, even the saddest sentiment is a little easier to digest.

The Canadian quintet’s strategy for success appears so foolproof that it’s a wonder more bands haven’t adopted it. But treading the line between humor and pathos is a balancing act that’s harder than it looks, which is why the Barenaked Ladies have the territory pretty much to themselves.

The Ladies brought their rock-as-carny sideshow act to the Universal Amphitheatre on Tuesday with a set that split the difference between pop catharsis and comedy shtick. This is a cult band at heart--its best songs, such as “Brian Wilson” and “If I Had $1000000,” have the feel of inside jokes that only initiates can truly appreciate.

But they’re also great models of pop craft, lacing schoolboy-clever conceits into songs that still score direct emotional hits. Those two songs appeared on the band’s 1992 major-label debut, “Gordon,” which made the Ladies superstars in Canada. The band then blunted its sharp wit a tad in an attempt to break through in the States, and it worked: Its frenetic 1998 hit “One Week,” from its 4-million-selling album “Stunt,” turned them into MTV darlings.

Like “Stunt,” BNL’s new album “Maroon” displays only flashes of the band’s old drollery, but on stage, Barenaked Ladies can turn serviceable songs into celebrations with their eager-to-please professionalism.

The band’s two main singers, Steven Page and Ed Robertson, turned goofiness into a virtue at the Amphitheatre, scissor-kicking on the downbeat, exchanging one-liners like seasoned stand-ups, breaking into monologues about Nicolas Cage’s acting style and the band’s recent turn on “Behind the Music.” Page’s full-bodied, plaintive croon, which is one of the most arresting voices in pop, turned songs such as “Jane” and “Too Little Too Late” into sharply etched melodramas. Even his tossed-off take on the “Cats” theme “Memory” delivered the emotional sucker-punch of powerful musical theater.

“Memory” was one of a handful of musical comedy set pieces interspersed like sharp squirts of seltzer between songs. Robertson and Page freestyled amusing raps about nothing in particular, while Robertson, drummer Tyler Stewart and bassist Jim Creeggan performed a boy-band dance routine to a medley that included Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” and Madonna’s “Music.”

These bits are like lifeblood to Ladies fanatics, and despite their occasionally cloying cuteness, they provided the connective tissue for a set that whipsawed between sincere and silly.