When the Barenaked Ladies released their sixth studio album Everything to Everyone, a great many reviewers thought that's exactly what they were trying to be.

And as a result, there were also a great number of scribes who focused in on the more serious aspects of the album -- as though this was some great revelation that the Ladies would record songs that weren't on the wacky side of goofy -- as though it was a concerted effort by the band to break with its past and become a more mature, more meaningful act.

"I think if you try and position yourself as a serious band it will only backfire," says Ladies member Steven Page from his hotel room in Austin. "We've always been very aware of that and try to take that imaging side very lightly because, well, we're just uncomfortable with it otherwise. Since our second album we always joked about calling our new album Hi, We're Really Serious."

In contrast to what was being written about them at the time of the album's release last October, the first single from Everything to Everyone was the infinitely catchy track Another Postcard, which played into the silliness with its story of a man driven mad by an endless barrage of postcards featuring chimpanzees.

But Page, who brings the Ladies boys to the 'Dome Thursday night, thinks showcasing that side -- the side many people seem to relate them to -- may have actually backfired this time, thanks mainly to the state the industry is in right now.

"I think my post mortem is that they put Another Postcard out as the first single and ... the kids who liked it downloaded it and the grownups who would have bought the record heard it and said this isn't for me," he says thoughtfully.

"If you look at the records people are buying in those same weeks it was stuff like Norah Jones and Rod Stewart ... and then there's also stuff like Coldplay.

"People like serious soulful rock music and there's an audience for it, people buy those records. The plan of attack at that point was let's go out with guns a-blazin', take over the radiowaves and try and have a big pop hit.

"But I don't think those hits sell records the way they used to. So even though it was a Top 10 hit, as it was down in the States, I don't think it sells records in the way that it did for us five years ago. I think perhaps the way to go would have been more legit."

More legit also probably means aiming squarely for an audience that, like the one for Jones, is a little closer in age to where the Ladies band members are -- in their mid-30s.

But, although Page admits to having been told his group is now "too old for MuchMusic," he doesn't necessarily think the Ladies have been put out to pasture in favour of the younger CanCon contingent.

"I don't know if the industry pushes you aside," he says. "I think what happens is you get older and your audience gets older...

"That's just the nature of rock 'n' roll -- it is about youth and so on."

And, after more than a decade together, the fickle and ever-changing nature of rock music is something he and the rest of the band are seasoned enough to understand and accept.

That's why the relatively disappointing sales thus far for Everything to Everyone -- Page estimates figures around 300,000 in the U.S. -- don't really worry him.

They have seen life from atop the Canadian and American music charts -- thanks mainly to the '98 release Stunt and its enduring single One Week -- and Page says that sitting where they're at now is a good place for the T.O. act to be.

"What's exciting for us now is that we've been doing this long enough that you see your audience grow and shrink and grow and shrink, but you understand that there's a core there now that will exist outside of all of that," he says. "And I think that's the mark of success for us."