TORONTO - The Barenaked Ladies' first single following the high-profile exit of Steven Page was an anguished tune called "You Run Away," featuring frontman Ed Robertson singing about a fleeing friend and a broken brotherhood.

And Robertson isn't being coy about the subject matter.

If "You Run Away" sounds like it was inspired by the departure of founding member Page -- sample lyric: "I tried to be your brother/ You cried and ran for cover/ I made a mess, who doesn't?" -- that's because it was.

"It was absolutely inspired by some of that relationship," Robertson said in an interview outside the band's crammed Toronto rehearsal space.

"But it's not totally about him, you know. There are lots of moments on the record that come from dealing with that relationship. I worked with the guy for 20 years and I knew him for 15 years before that. It's a huge relationship in my life.

"That parting is like a marriage break-up. There was a lot, emotionally, to sort through."

That's been the theme of the past few years for a band that's gone through more than just the loss of one of its signature voices.

The Barenaked Ladies, whose public image has always centred on the sort of high-energy, goofy good disposition required by children's television hosts, endured a tumultuous period fraught with private and public disappointments.

Robertson's mother died and he crashed a small float plane near Algonquin Park. Then there was Page's drug arrest (the charges were eventually dropped) and the '09 announcement that he was leaving the band that he helped found more than 20 years prior.

Those involved at the time said that scheduling had become a headache for the band, and Page said he wanted to pursue solo opportunities. The parting was said to be amicable.

But following the January release of "You Run Away," Page seemed to take umbrage with the song.

After paraphrasing a line from the tune in his Twitter account ("He tried his best. But it wasn't enough," Page wrote), he responded to fans who lamented the apparently rocky relationship between Page and the rest of the band.

"That song was a pretty low blow, wasn't it?" Page tweeted. "I wish them lots of success, but it sucks being a target."

Robertson says he and Page haven't been communicating much since the departure (Robertson says he tried reaching out immediately after the split but says that, for now, their relationship is a "tough thing to bridge.")

But he insists he didn't intend to offend Page with the song.

"I would just say it's not a low blow," he said. "It's never intended as such. It's just a song. And it's not to him, for him, or about him. It certainly draws from that relationship but I don't do low blows."

Robertson doesn't bristle when asked about Page, greeting questions about the split openly and patiently ("It's not the elephant in the room," he says. "I don't mind talking about it at all.")

Similarly, if there's much discomfort for the Ladies stepping forward in their new configuration on "All in Good Time," it scarcely shows.

The stark, black-and-white cover, which shows the quartet looking rather glum, hints at the yearning, introspective material within.

Themes of endurance and withstanding hardship are everywhere on the band's 11th studio album, from Kevin Hearn's brittle "Another Heartbreak" to the spiky pop tune "Summertime," on which Robertson asks: "How do we make it through the days? How do we not cave in and bottom out?"

And "The Love We're In," written after Robertson's plane crash, finds the singer feeling appreciative of life following his brush with death.

Robertson jokes that because the band is best known for breezy -- even slightly silly -- singles like "One Week," each of their albums, which incorporate a broader range of moods, have been greeted with the dubious designation of being their "most mature yet."

Except this time it might be true.

"This record is X-rated, it has to be," he says with a laugh. "Because this one actually maybe is more mature."

That's not to say it can't be fun, too.

The spritely rave-up "Four Seconds," for example, lays Robertson's rapid-fire non-sequiturs over a swaggering bedrock of mellotron loops and old jazz combos, making for an constantly surprising oddball of a tune.

It sounds spontaneous, a feeling that Robertson said characterized the songwriting approach behind the album.

"I think I've intellectualized the writing process a lot more in the past," he said. "With this record, I just tried to be more cathartic and more literal and more emotional and more raw. ...

"I'm really proud of everything Steve and I did together but you fall into patterns. I ended up writing trying to impress him and not just express myself, which can create really great things, that creative partnership. But I think we'd explored that, and this was a great opportunity for me to just breathe."

On April 6, the band will begin a two-month North American tour, with shows scheduled in six Canadian provinces.

In preparation for the spring trek, Robertson says the band has re-worked some old favourites that heavily featured Page's influence.

The band played their first live show without Page in Florida around a year ago, an experience Robertson called terrifying and "sort of like walking onstage with no pants."

And then? Well, once again, the Barenaked Ladies survived.

"I had this familiarity with Steve and I just thought, 'How are we going to do this?' What's it going to be like? Is it going to work?"' Robertson recalled.

"And then you walk out onstage and everybody's going nuts, and you realize: 'Of course it's going to work.' We've been in a rock band for 20 years, we know what we're doing, and all these people love it.

"We just realized we'd really been overthinking it. People were there to see a great show and that's what we do."