Our Lady Peace - Burn Burn
Our Lady Peace fans will delight in a return to straightforward alt-rock on their new album, Burn Burn, which will hit stores on Tuesday. On this record frontman Raine Maida made an obvious conscious effort to get back to the band’s roots and the result is their best work since Clumsy.
Like many bands before them, Our Lady Peace struggled with identity in the wake of their hugely successful breakout album. The band followed Clumsy with a series of albums that reached to far for critical praise, Spiritual Machines, or were blatant attempts at radio friendly hit machines, Gravity and Healthy in Paranoid Times. In doing so sales fell and turmoil developed resulting in various changes in the band’s line-up. That was then, this is now.
Back with a new attitude, the album opens with “All You Did Was Save My Life” a guitar driven radio-friendly tune that sets the tone for the entire album. With striking lyrics like “I’m not for sale / But I’ve been sold” and the harmonic proclamation “I’m not dying” it’s hard not to imagine the song also being a bold statement to the music industry.
The rest of the album flows nicely between softer rock ballads, slow building rock songs and big sounding anthemic crowd movers, including the album standout track “The End Is Where We Begin”. But despite some impressive highlights the album is far from perfect.
Maida falls into some formulaic traps in both his production and his song writing that critics will surely use to dismiss the album. Also like their peers, Vertical Horizon and Lifehouse, his singular focus on relationship themes make it hard to take him serious as a songwriter no matter how catchy the turn of phrase or how powerful the hook.
All in all, Burn Burn is an album that should be commercially successful and could possibly vault Our Lady Peace back into the mainstream spotlight.
Pre-Order the Our Lady Peace's album Burn Burn on Amazon.
Comments
Our Lady Peace is amazing. Peers like Vertical Horizon and Lifehouse?! You sir, are on drugs.
I think you need to do some research before making statements. "Gravity" was extremely successful in the States for a Canadian band - spawning tons of brand-new hardcore fans.
When was the last time anyone heard Vertical Horizon? I thought they left the spotlight after "You're a God"
Anyway, I heard the album. It doesn't really sound like any of their old stuff, but it definitely kicks ass.
I might have gone too far putting Vertical Horizon in as a peer, Our Lady Peace is has clearly had more success... but when I did so I was drawing more a comparison to the subject matter Scannel and Maida gravitate to in nearly every song.
And as for Gravity, Peace Fan... well, to me that was an album that reached for the radio with every single song. Sure it sold better than the other two I referenced... and it had some solid songs on it. But to me it pales in comparison to Clumsy and Burn Burn.
Tough to gauge comparison when there are so many to make. I appreciate your (so-far) ability to stay objective throughout the process and dig your writing style and knowledge. Keep it up dude.
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