Our Lady Peace as arsonists

Our Lady Peace

For some reason, Canadian bands have always seemed to create their fare share of quirky and weird. From the quirky pop of the Barenaked Ladies to the weird of the Crash Test Dummies, it seems almost impossible to think of a current Canadian band that doesn’t have that quality (with the exception of Nickelback, whose oddity is their complete vanilla-normalcy). Our Lady Peace doesn’t escape this generalization either.

The quirkiness likely begins with frontman Raine Maida's nasal delivery and almost yodel-esque use of falsetto. There’s also something frequently untraditional in the writing and arrangement of their songs. At least that has been the case in the past.

But here is the present and here is OLP’s new record Burn Burn. It is the band’s seventh album and first since 2005’s largely unheard Healthy In Paranoid Times. Perhaps due to the waning attention they received on that record, or perhaps due to some new attention brought on by 2008 American Idol winner David Cook’s professed love of OLP (he performed their song “Innocent” on an Idol episode and Maida co-wrote three songs on Cook’s debut cd), but the band seems to be in a mood to create a new image…and to let the old one “Burn Burn”. The first thing burnt off is Maida’s falsetto.

The new record opens with the first single, “All You Did Was Save My Life” and, strangely, it sounds like a song Cook would do. It has a similar arena-friendly sound to the aforementioned Nickelback, but with a modern-U2 feel to the lyric. It’s a big sound, but I’m not sure the band pulls it off. Or maybe I just like them a little smaller.

And immediately the band rewards my request, and takes us to the quiet intro of “Dreamland”.  The opening of an unaccompanied upright piano leads to a story of a family seeking an escape to a dreamland where, “the kids are alright and the sky is blue/we all got wings and know how to fly”. Did I say this song was small? Well only initially. This chorus is huge…and quite frankly convincing.

The middle of the record is full of diverse aspiration; “Monkey Brains” feels a bit of a misstep, with Duncan Coutts’ heavy bass and distortion reminiscent of Wolfmother. Our Lady Peace can not pull off Wolfmother. They are not that rocking. But then, in a complete 180 degree turn, halfway into the song they drop in this lovely acoustic bridge, which is too quickly destroyed by the return of Wolfmother.

One of the best songs on the record, “Escape Artist”, opens with a muffled kick-drum from Jeremy Taggart’s kit, more piano, and then some pretty incendiary guitar licks from axeman Steve Mazur. In a strange way this feels a little like OLP may have done some song-writing in the cold November rain. It’s a more mature band and the further into the record we get, the more they sound like they’re not over-reaching those “big” intentions.

On “Refuge”, whatever influence U2 had on earlier tracks on the record is finally mastered… here Maida and co. rise to the challenge. The song has a base of pulsing bass and lyrics of love, and then on top of that it builds and swirls so epically and touchingly. The love song “Never Get Over You” is also really good, and towards the end of the record we receive the melodic and bluesy “Signs of Life” . I say “receive” because this is a gift. An intimate little song of the “trouble (one) life has seen” that plays nice counterpoint to the grandiosity of most of the surrounding songs.

Burn Burn is a short record, checking in with only ten songs (unless you purchase the deluxe edition with bonus tracks), but the result is lean and concise and thick with good pop-rock songs that aspire to the arenas of the bands’ heroes and influences. And if the world finds out about this record, they may reach that goal. It is not undeserving and it may surprise. It may light (or relight) a few fires.