Our Lady Peace Gets Clumsy by Karen Bliss

Following the cheesy piano keyboard path on the floor of the otherwise spectacular Sony Music complex in Toronto leads to an enviable rehearsal space where Our Lady Peace has assembled to do a photo shoot. Various pieces of gear stake their claim on the place.

Clean and spacious, if not a little cluttered, the room is just one of the perks made available to Our Lady Peace when it signed with Sony back in 1993. Another is the CD manufacturing faciltity on the premises, which enabled the guys to proof the artwork for their latest album, CLUMSY, making sure the blacks didn't print purple and the yellows were the right hue.

"We drove assembly crazy," says guitarist Mike Turner, whose momentary concern is ensuring that his Mesa/Boogie amp is back from the repair shop by the end of the day, because the band heads out the next day on a warm-up tour of Canadian colleges. CLUMSY hits the streets just days later.

As Turner strums out Smashing Pumpkins chords and vocalist Raine Maida noodles on his guitar, co-manager Eric Lawrence comes in, armed with a stack of compact discs hot off the press. One by one they check it out, Maida, Turner, drummer Jeremy Taggart and bassist/keyboardist Duncan Coutts. The cover depicts a man powerlessly clutching a swing in his teeth; on the inside is his puppet alter-ego, decrepit, alone and tortured. It's what the band envisioned.

The lead single from the album, "Superman's Dead," was released before Christmas and has leapt tall charts in a single bound. CLUMSY would prove to do the same. With sales of 26,000 in the first week, the album debuted at Number 1 on THE RECORD'S retail charts, a feat matched by one other Canadian band in history, The Tragically Hip. Obviously, fans were anxiously awaiting the arrival of a new OLP album.

Upon releasing its eastern-tinged rock debut, NAVEED in 1994, Our Lady Peace toured its ass off for two-and-a-half years with everyone from Sponge and Bush to Van Halen and Page & Plant. By the time they came off the road late last summer, following a tour with Alanis Morissette, NAVEED had sold a half-million copies in North America, split evenly between Canada and the United States. Not surprisingly, after playing 500 live dates, the band had developed into a confident, adventuresome players, and the ruggedly handsome Maida into a charismatic frontman.

When the individual and group shots have been taken, the band relocates to Sony's artist lounge for the interview. No one seems the least bit offended when it's suggested that NAVEED has a homogeneous sound and that CLUMSY is by far and away a superior album. The band has learned to use space--how to be heavy without bombarding, how to be organic without being folky, and how to use synth, percussion, piano and mixing tricks to give the songs subtle nuttiness.

In one word, CLUMSY breathes. "We learned to not play," says guitarist Mike Turner. Where NAVEED came alive because of the heavy groove and most likely would not have translated simply on an acoustic guitar, the new material is built on melody--gentler in places, fierce in others, but with assorted textures which don't mask the song.

"There's a lot more dynamics (on CLUMSY) and that's something you learn from being a live band, after 500 shows," says Maida. "Because live, you don't have the tricks of the studio, you have to use dynamics. That's something we became better at. We're much stronger at songwriting now. We just wanted to open up (the parameters) even more on this record, and having (new bassist) Duncan, who sings, plays cello and piano, that gives us a lot of different sounds. I mean, this is about a career," Maida adds. "It's not about selling a lot of records on the first two and then doing solo projects." Produced once again by Arnold Lanni, CLUMSY ranges from the melodic rock of "Superman's Dead" and "Automatic Flowers" to the more left-field "Carnival," which threads a loop of sampled chatter with a soldiering beat then ignites for the chorus; and "Car Crash," which has a disturbed, lazy vocal and meandering eerie accompaniment. Only the middle eastern quality of "The Story of 100 Aisles" links this album to NAVEED. Even the lyrics are less spiritual and more personal. In essence, the entire album is about perception, how changing your thinking has life-altering potential. The idea is crystallized in the vibrant melodic pop of the title track, about decisions, and the startlingly moving "4am," about forgiveness.

"They're not as ambiguous," says Maida of the new lyrics. "It's more personal, but I'm more comfortable talking about things. The stage for me, as a singer, is such an honest medium now that I'm not scared to be myself and say the things that I want to say." Our Lady Peace paid its dues in front of discriminating eyes. Formed in 1992, they never took the DIY route by pressing an indie CD or becoming staples of the Queen St. club circuit. Instead, Raine and Turner attended a music seminar put on by CANADIAN MUSICIAN and approached producer/songwriter Arnold Lanni (Frozen Ghost, Sheriff) after he "shredded" his fellow panelists for declaring there was a formula to songwriting. "That meeting was the turning point for us," says Maida, then just two credits shy of his degree in criminology from the University of Toronto.

They booked time at Lanni's Arnyard Studios and made two demos with original bassist Chris Eacrett and some guest drummers. Lanni liked what he heard through the walls and hooked them up with his manager Robert and partner Eric Lawrence of Coalition Entertainment. "When we first started working with them, they weren't a live band," says Lawrence. "They had only played a couple of shows together, but they had great songs. One of the best things, working with a developing band, is we share in the success." Convinced of this act, they invited record companies down to see them perform in the studio, even though they didn't have a permanent drummer. The day Sony Music Canada president Rick Camilleri, vice-president of A&R Mike Roth, and director of music publishing Gary Furniss showed up was the same day the band was holding auditions, but fortunately, the label sensed the drive and talent behind these neophytes and, despite the obvious risk, offered them a deal after hearing all they had to offer--a few songs and some ideas. It was purely faith and instinct.

"The first thing that blew us away were the songs, Raine's presense and the guitar sounds and riffs that Mike had. It was more the ideas that they were generating," recalls Camilleri. "That's what really did it for us. We walked out of the studio that day and we just believed that Raine was a star. It took us all of 10 minutes to decide." Taggart, one of the guys who auditioned that day, was immediatley invited to join the group. "I was behind the glass," recalls Lanni, "and I wouldn't say a lot as they auditioned all these drummers, but Jeremy played maybe eight bars into a song and I ran into the control room and said 'this is the kid right here.'"

In the spring of '93, with the lineup solidified, Our Lady Peace officially signed to Sony in Canada, but with only three songs recorded, there was a lot of work to be done. They went into pre-production from spring right through the summer, renting a place in MIssissauga, Ontario where they would jam all day and record it on a regular cassette player. Lanni would show up every day, helping with the song arangements. Production began in the fall at Arnyard Studios and finished in January '94.

"I think we were so ignorant, that's why we weren't intimidated," says Turner of the recording process. "We were completely limited by our inexperience on the first record," adds Maida, "which is fine though because NAVEED was really like our independant record. That's what the whole plan was from the beginning. We did these first three songs and we recorded them to a level we thought it needed to be, if we'd released them independantly. The seven more that we had written or were writing during the time that we got signed, we didn't feel any pressure. We just wanted to make a smalll little record that we liked." They weren't the only ones who liked that small little record. Containing eventual hits "The Birdman," "Supersatellite," "Starseed," "Naveed" and "Hope," NAVEED took off at home, and the following year was released in the U.S. on Relativity. Spearheaded by the success of the single "Starseed," the band found itself in the midst of a grueling six shows a week, as well as guest performances on Conan O'Brian and the now defunct Jon Stewart Show. But as things progressed, Eacrett wasn't cutting it. In September, he was kicked out of the band. "It was both on a personal level and musical," says Maida. "There were a few instances when we were trying to write on the road and the directions were so different that it was going to be really hard to make a second record." With ten days notice before another U.S. leg, Coutts, who played in a high school band with Maida back at Scarlet Heights in Etobicoke, was called in to audition. He had played with Maida and Turner at the original auditions but opted to finish school. "Two days later, they said, 'well, do you want to come on the road?'" recounts Coutts. "We had a tour booked in America, 6000-seat arenas," adds Turner with a laugh. "Yeah, by the way..." Coutts deadpans.

His presence offered a whole new dynamic to the rhythm section, says Taggart. "Chris' playing was very monotonous. Duncan's is way more melodic and tends to have more of a wavy path instead of a continuous line."

"It was weird," says Coutts, who had been playing in a local Toronto band, "because I was coming from a two-guitar oriented band; they were much different players than Mike. Mike makes up these crazy chords that I don't even think I'd ever seen a guitarist play before, so that was a different dynamic, and then stepping into a big tour was different--but these guys made it easy for me to do."

The band tried to write on the bus and at soundcheck, but when they returned to their rehearsal space and started writing together as a band again, they ditched many of those ideas. Between tours, they would book a couple of days at Arnyard and do songs off the floor. In January of '95, they rented a cottage near Bracebridge, Ontario, and Lanni carted up his Otari RADAR, preamps, microphones, samplers, keyboards and guitars to begin writing for the new album. "We started jamming along with each other every minute of the day," says Lanni, who would be producing again, "and we would have about 60 or 70 cassette tapes full of ideas that we would put on and tape the whole day; and then whenever we'd get bored with that, we'd put on our skates, go outside to the lake and have a hockey game." Recording began in March and continued on and off the rest of the year in between tours, vacations or simply a day off. It was the same studio, Arnyard, but the guys weren't the wide-eyed rookies they were on NAVEED. "They were much more focused," says Lanni, who had watched like a proud father as OLP became successful.

"I think we have a much better idea of what the studio is capable of now than before," says Turner, "but we certainly don't know as much as Arnold."

"We might not know exactly what we want, but we know what we don't want," adds Maida, "so we try a hundred things and discard the ideas we don't like. Arn just lets us make our own mistakes. At the end of the eight hours, we might go back to the original idea, but Arn never stifles our creativity. He's more like a fifth member. We just use him as a sounding board, in the same way U2 use Brian Eno. It's an amazing dynamic."

"We did so many demos and different versions of the songs," he continues. "So many colours. I think the record took longer because we were doing that, experimenting, whereas if we were to take the first version of every song, it wouldn't have been as dynamic. There's a lot of different textures on this record, compared to the other one, in terms of spaces and tempos. There's some slower stuff and there's some really, really aggressive stuff."

Lanni, the guy who lamblasted the formulaic way of songwriting at the music panel, relishes the freedom he has and gives to Our Lady Peace on CLUMSY, and textured the songs with faint gurgles, hums, sputters and grinds. "As soon as we felt that something started feeling too predictable, we mixed it. Even if it sounded abrasive or against the grain, at least it sounded fresh," he explains.

"Psycho-acoustics play a huge part in making a record. This is a grade one kind of example, but you don't hear a lot of sad songs on the banjo, you don't hear a lot of happy songs on a cello. The emotion that those instruments evoke is very important, so after a song is recorded, we wanted to surround the melody with different sound bytes without going overboard. If you didn't understand the lyrics, and all you were hearing was just the way it hits the human spirit, it has to make you feel what the singer is feeling."

For his part, Maida, whose voice both strengthened and suffered ont he road, took some lessons from Toronto vocal coach Bill Vincent prior to recording. "I was very inexperienced at the beginning and I blew out my throat," he reveals. "In the last year of touring, I had the beginning of nodes, so I had to get my shit together...to have a career."

"...or sing Rod Stewart," quips Turner. On CLUMSY, it's obvious his vocal performance has improved since NAVEED. He now uses his voice as a full instrument, veering from plaintive to dementia to rage to falsetto, adding yet more colour to the songs. "I've been able to do all those things I used to hear in my head when I was beginning in music," Maida says, "which tends to be more like those female singers with acrobatic voices. I've been able to implement that more on this record, so hopefully that'll keep happening as I get better as a singer." "...and slowly turn into a woman," cracks Taggart.