The first is that, even though the track selection was limited to the Barenaked Ladies’ 30-odd singles, this release still manages to leave out several highlights such as “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” and “For You.” The second problem is that the first nine tracks of the 14-track album had previously appeared on their other compilation album, released 10 years before, Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits (1991-2001). In fact, the full title of Disc One, their first and only Greatest Hits compilation prior to the new release, suggests that we should have expected a Disc Two: 2001-2011,  but instead we received a release which is essentially a shortened version of Disc One with a few extra tracks recorded in the meantime.

To the band’s credit, a Greatest Hits album covering the period from 2001 to 2011 would have paled greatly in comparison to Disc One. In the 10 years covered by that disc, the band released Gordon, Maybe You Should Drive, Born On A Pirate Ship, Stunt and Maroon, while the following ten years saw the band release Everything To Everyone, Barenaked Ladies Are Me and All In Good Time, which all lose when they are stacked up against any of the first five albums, and the most recent of which is the band’s first attempt since the departure of founding member and major songwriting force Steven Page. In that period they also released the less serious, gimmick-oriented albums Barenaked For The Holidays and Snacktime, no songs from which were included on the new compilation.

So, a Disc Two: 2001-2011 would have been a mistake, but perhaps the best option for the band would have been Disc Two: 1991-2011. With that as the template, Barenaked Ladies could have included a selection of the strongest material from their more recent released as well as some of their classic songs which were left off of Disc One, such as “Life In A Nutshell” and “Alcohol.”

As it stands, we have a release that will utterly fail to please fans and which is not exactly capitalizing on a period of popularity for the band. As for the actually sequencing, everything is offered up in chronological order, another example of how little thought was put into this release. Of the nine tracks which previous appeared on Disc One (which was itself carefully sequenced and non-chronological, and featured two newly recorded tracks), “Call and Answer” is perhaps the only one which doesn’t deserve to make the cut from that release to this one.

The final five tracks of Hits from Yesterday and Today are post-Disc One. The first two, “Another Postcard” and “Testing 1,2,3” are both from Everything to Everyone and are both reasonable choices for inclusion but neither of them are as good as the third single from that album, “For You.” On the other hand “Easy,” the only song included from Barenaked Ladies Are Me, was the best single from that album, so no complaints there.

“The Big Bang Theory Theme,” however, has no cause to be here. It’s a dreadful piece of unbalanced cheese clearly designed to set the tone for a terrible sitcom. It was thrown in due to the unfortunate fact that it’s likely the most well-known Barenaked Ladies song of the last five years and has not been released elsewhere. “You Run Away,” the closing track, is not much better. Well, actually it is much better, but that’s not saying much, it’s still bad. Some of the worst lyrics of Robertson’s career, it’s a resentful, subtlety-free jab at Steven Page, who left the band before the recording of their most recent album, All In Good Time. I haven’t heard that album, and this song doesn’t make me want to hear it.

This release gives a bad name to the already useless category of Greatest Hits albums, but it does have one quality which might be useful to fans: it puts things in perspective. Because the sequencing is in chronological order, the listener can actually hear the band get worse as the album plays. It opens with “If I Had $1000000,” one of the most iconic Canadian songs of all time and an example of how excellent they were as performers already by their first album. For some reason no tracks from the excellent Maybe You Should Drive are included, making way for “The Old Apartment” and “Brian Wilson,” two brilliant songs which proved they were more than a joke band. “One Week” and “It’s All Been Done” are next, the band’s two most successful singles. The rest of the tracks are little more than attempts to recapture the radio-friendly success of those two songs, and each track seems to do it a little less effectively.

Track listing: