Source: Access Magazine, February/March 1997

OUR LADY PEACE
Clumsy
Columbia/Sony

Canadian bands have, of late, had pretty good luck following up successful debuts; Moist and I Mother Earth have already pulled off the feat, which is harder than it looks. Add Our Lady Peace to that list; the album might be called Clumsy, but the band is as sharp as a razor. This is no carbon-copy knockoff of Naveed, calculated to maximize profits. There is a demonstrable maturation at work here; some of the brashness is gone, and the band seems less inclined to deliberately theatrical gestures. The pleasures of these songs are more subtle, more refined. That doesn't mean you won't rock just the sme -- 'Big Dumb Rocket,' 'Hello Oskar,' 'Automatic Flowers' and 'Superman's Dead' all chum fiercely. But you'll also unwrap the fairground ambience of 'Carnival,' the oblique Zeppelin reference in 'The Story of 100 Aisles' and vocalist Raine Maida's fair approximation of Jeff Buckley on 'Car Crash.' And then there's the title track, which will come to rival 'Starseed' as Our Lady Peace's finest moment to date.
James Morrison


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