Source: Access Magazine, March 1998
LIVE SCENE
OUR LADY PEACE
Copps Coliseum, Hamilton
As a bitter January wind tore through Hamilton's downtown streets, you couldn't have picked a better shelter than Copps Coliseum, where Our Lady Peace drew a crowd of more than 10,000 on this stop of their first headlining arena tour. For their own turn, Vancouver's The Age of Electric made the best of a muddy sound mix with a zesty blend of pop/punk, culled largely from their recent Make A Pest A Pet release. Particularly effective were 'I Don't Mind' and 'Remote Control,' which bookended the set, although the familiarity of older material like 'Untitled' and 'Ugly' gave them a boost. AOE seems right at home on a big stage, the contrast between the rangy Kearns brothers (bassist John and singer/guitarist Todd) and the Dahle boys (guitarist Ryan and drummer Kurt) providing an extra bit of visual interest. They've risen through the ranks of Canada's second-tier bands (Zuckerbaby, Bloody Chicletts, Glueleg, Odds) in record time; what they had on display this night suggests that a promotion to Premier League status is the next (only?) logical step. They've earned it. Mind you, it's a lot more competitive at that level (I Mother Earth, Moist, The Tragically Hip, 54-40), although lately it seems as though Our Lady Peace has had the field to itself. The band has sold more than 700,000 copies of its most recent album Clumsy, outdistancing even perennial champs the Hip, and their show seems custom-tailored to show off their new-found status as Canada's biggest, bestest rock act. They suffered a bit from Copps' tricky acoustics as well, although amends were made in triplicate by a truly staggering light show. Dramatic and dynamic, the constant motion and vibrant colours lent a quantifiable visceral impact to songs that already have no shortage of emotional heft. Balancing their set roughly equally with tunes from Clumsy ('Superman's Dead,' 'Automatic Flowers,' 'Carnival,' '4AM') and their debut album Naveed ('Hope,' 'Naveed,' 'Starseed'), OLP gave their fans everything they could possibly have asked for and then some. Even so, there were hints that this is still a work-in-progress. Thir cover of the Beatles' 'Dear Prudence' was entertaining, but an odd choice for the band to end its regular set, while a radical reinvention of 'Julia' was compelling, but not the sort of stuff of which major arena rock shows are generally constructed. At times they seemed dwarfed by the magnitude of their own staging, appeared to be playing more among themselves than to the crowd. But enough quibbling; if Our Lady Peace hasn't yet learned how to project themselves to the furthest corners of a major arena, these are after all still early days. It will come. More importantly, with such a spectacular evening of entertainment, the band has demonstrably asserted its right to be there.
James Morrison
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