Our Lady Peace - Career Review
Doug Haidet
April 11, 2004

Whether you credit file-sharing, downloading, CD burning or any other controversial route that music finds its way to eardrums with today, it is impossible to ignore the presence of Canadian music on radio playlists all across America these days.

With the recent eruption and exposure of artists north of the border on U.S. airwaves comes the question: Where has the talent been hiding? Of course, acts such as Shania Twain, the Barenaked Ladies and Celine Dion have been enjoying better-than-moderate play and sales for around a decade now, but never before have Canadian artists made themselves heard on the radio in America more consistently than right now.

With the emergence of Nickelback’s blockbuster album Silver Side Up, which featured mega-singles “How You Remind Me” and “Too Bad,” along with the play of goofball punk rockers Sum 41 at the turn of the century came large sales ripples for teen phenom Avril Lavigne’s debut album Let Go and a swoon of attention around up-and-coming pop-rock starlet Fefe Dobson. But to think that these acts have been the best Canada has had to offer would be a terrible misconception.

There are those that would argue that the best way to break onto the music scene is with a hit single. If that is the case, Canadian alternative rockers Our Lady Peace have taken the road less traveled. The quartet have gone about it with a John Henry style, chipping away at the music market, creating solid record after solid record while also building an ever-expanding fan base.

The group’s roots can be traced back to the early 1990’s, where lead singer Raine Maida and former lead guitarist Mike Turner got together and eventually met the producer of their first four albums, Arnold Lanni. The band, which got its name from a 1943 poem written by Mark Van Doren, was able to record a four-track demo at Lanni’s Arnyard Studios. Rather than doing the basic showcase to plead a deal from record labels, the group sent invitations to the labels interested to come check them out in their rehearsal space. Sony Music Canada accepted and, citing the band’s talent and drive, offered them a deal that night. They were later signed by Relativity Records in America.

Our Lady Peace released their first single in 1994 just before releasing their first album, Naveed, which is a Middle Eastern name that means “bearer of good news.” The band had only been together 14 months and had played just seven shows together prior to the release of the album. Four singles later-most of which were only heard inside Canadian borders-the group was off and running, and some big names were taking notice. In April of 1995 the band played with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at the request of Plant after he heard the song “Starseed” on the radio. A few months later they were asked to tour with Van Halen on their North American tour. In August of 1995, about a year and a half since the release of Naveed, the album achieved platinum sales status in Canada-which is over 100,000 copies sold.

By the time 1996 rolled around, OLP was taking different avenues to access fans. Their cover of the Beatle’s song “Tomorrow Never Knows” was put on the soundtrack to the movie “The Craft” and they began touring with hot Canadian act Alanis Morisette. “Starseed” rose all the way to number 14 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks.

The next year OLP went worldwide through the launching of their official website, ourladypeace.com. The year saw them grace the covers of seven different magazines in all and spawned their biggest-selling album to date, Clumsy. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Soundscan chart, which is Canada’s equivalent to the Billboard chart, a feat that had only been duplicated by one other Canadian band, The Tragically Hip. Less than a month later, the album went platinum. Singles that made a large splash on American radio from the album were the title track and “Superman’s Dead,” which both made it all the way to Billboard’s Top 5 Modern Rock Tracks, as well as the ballad “4am.” For the video of the single “Automatic Flowers,” the band even got their feet wet in the directing aspect of music. By that summer, the group was headlining Edgefest, a large festival comparable to the X-Fest show put on every year near Pittsburgh. Some big rock acts also in that show were America’s Collective Soul and Australia’s Silverchair. At one point in ’97, Our Lady Peace sold out Maple Leaf Gardens, an arena in Canada, within one hour.

Things continued to come full force for the band at the beginning of 1998, as they were able to open for the Rolling Stones in Quebec City. A month later Our Lady Peace kicked off its first-ever American club headlining tour during which they opened for the Stones again, this time in New York.  With confusion swirling all over North America due to the oft-occurring school shootings, the group put out a single in 1999 based around the paranoia of such problems as they readied themselves for the release of their third album, Happiness…is Not a Fish That You Can Catch. The video for the song, “One Man Army,” was added to MTV in October. On the album, the band was able to get jazz legend Elvin Jones to contribute on one song.  OLP toured with Creed in support of the new album, just as Creed’s now diamond-selling album Human Clay was taking off. The next summer brought Our Lady Peace’s own festival, Summersault, to rock fans. Big names playing the show were A Perfect Circle, Smashing Pumpkins and the Foo Fighters.

The band was certainly evolving, and that evolution spawned their fourth CD, Spiritual Machines, an album largely based around a book by Ray Kurzweil called “The Age of Spiritual Machines-When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence.” Maida helped in the production of the album, further improving the band’s diversity in the business. Often referred to as a concept album based around the progress of technology, much of the record dealt with the idea of mankind evolving to a point where it can’t compete with the intelligence that computers have taken on over time-that we are just one chapter of life. The idea got mixed reviews, but certainly raised eyebrows as to the multiple different pathways OLP was investigating in their musical journey. The album featured sound bites of Kurzweil, who invented the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind as well as multiple other technological leaps, reading passages from his book and further stamping the effect of the author and his idea on the band.  Spiritual Machines topped the Soundscan charts in the categories of both Alternative and Metal.

In December of that same year, Maida co-starred in a small-scale movie, “Century Hotel,” with his wife Chantal Kreviazuk, who is also a Canadian musician. The couple, which also wrote the film score to the silent film classic, Cleopatra, wrote a new song for the movie as well. The two have also played a tremendous role in helping out children in different countries who have been affected by times of war. War Child has expanded dramatically since their involvement in the cause began.

Within the next two months, Our Lady Peace was once again hitting some milestones as a band. Spiritual Machines was the fourth-straight album to go platinum in Canada for the group and Clumsy had just topped diamond status (1 million copies sold in Canada). Unfortunately, heading into 2002 and during the recording of their fifth studio release, Gravity, the band separated ways with Turner due to creative differences. Forced to hold tryouts for a new lead guitarist, the band found Detroit native Steve Mazur.  To this day, they site his ability as giving them the opportunity to tread the waters of more simple, raw, passionate rock music. With Gravity, the band had turned over a new leaf, trying out producer Bob Rock (Metallica) rather than continuing on with longtime friend Lanni. It has been the band’s most commercially successful album in America. The first single, “Somewhere Out There,” climbed all the way to No. 7 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks and to No. 44 on the Hot 100. The video went all the way to No. 1 on MTV2’s Rock Show Countdown and the album went gold in the U.S. within the year.

Our Lady Peace’s most recent releases have attempted to capture their amazing live, in-concert presence-one often said to be in the elite of live rock acts performing today. The band released Live, both a CD and DVD of a pair of shows done in Canada.

As for 2004, OLP’s sixth studio release is currently in progress. The band, which has said multiple times over that the current lineup of Maida on vocals, Mazur on lead guitar, Duncan Coutts on bass and Jeremy Taggart on drums has them feeling as though they just began making music. They have signed on with Bob Rock again for the album and an August release is said to be the latest expected.

I suppose my interest in the band began around 1997 when I heard “Clumsy” on the radio. The eerie piano that introduces the song caught my ear and Maida’s vocals were and still are some of the most unique I’ve ever heard.  I continued to follow them after that record, but my enjoyment of the band has grown based more around what they represent and how they experiment with the industry. It’s rare to hear about a group with even moderate exposure that doesn’t exploit it. Sex and drugs have never been the concentration of the group and they seem focused on truly affecting music in the most positive light that they can while also affecting people as well. When I see them live I see a band that truly enjoys what it does because of the music it has created and because of the reaction it receives from its fans.  I’ve seen them in bars, halls, at a festival and in an arena and their approach has always been the same.

I like the fact that I am not saturated with their sound here in America.  If I ever hear them on the radio it makes my day because I know the route they’ve traveled to get to that point-no big singles, no dolled up image, just hard work and experimentation.

The group has always been unique in the way they do things. For the first four albums they released, each cover had the picture of the same old man, Saul Fox, on it. The group believed that Fox conveyed the soul of young people in an unpredictable world. The content of their songs envelops so many different feelings, emotions and aspects of life while also questioning the future. One could argue that that is the basis of many rock albums, but there is just something different about the way Our Lady Peace attempts to project their wonder, confusion and hope involving the world. Our Lady Peace’s biggest-selling album, Clumsy, has moved well over 2.5 million copies worldwide, and while that number is topped many times by rap albums fueled by one club single or pop albums driven by one catchy chorus, the essence of OLP’s music, the emotion they create and the thoughts they provoke will far outlast the shallow, overplayed two minute single that sells a million copies.