Empowerment can be a daunting or liberating thing depending on how you handle it. Barenaked Ladies have chosen the latter. “Barenaked Ladies Are Me” is the Canadian group’s ninth album and their first release of all original material for their newly formed independent record company. Their last album was a disappointment as most “contractual obligation” albums are. Now, inspired by their new found autonomy, they’ve come up with their best album since 1998’s “Stunt.”

In keeping with that theme, most of the songs on “Barenaked Ladies Are Me” deal with forging new relationships. From the opener, “Adrift” through “Everything Had Changed” and “Vanishing” to the closer “Wind It Up”, they continually return the idea of new beginnings.  “Bank Job” casts them in an Ocean’s Eleven type of situation with hilarious results and “Bull in a China Shop” along with “Maybe You’re Right” are some of their catchiest and accessible songs ever. That’s saying a lot for a band whose songs have always been clever, funny and multilayered. The new songs are infused with a higher degree of melody than their most recent albums, and like Brian Wilson’s music, the artist they once wrote a song about, there’s a great deal of experimenting with different instruments and harmonies to compliment the texture of the songs.

Written, rehearsed and recorded in a home studio out in the woods of rural Ontario, “Barenaked Ladies Are Me” is the band’s most solid and communal set of songs. Returning to their D.I.Y. roots they’ve become more of a group than just a quintet of individual artists, singing each other’s songs and raising each other’s standards. Masters of their own domain you might say.

Listen for lots of songs from “Barenaked Ladies Are Me” by Barenaked Ladies on Paul Shugrue’s new music show “Out of the Box” Monday through Thursday from 7pm to 9pm and Saturday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm on Public Radio in Hampton Roads 89.5 WHRV.