Our Lady Peace

by alistair stewart

Essentially, a record company band bio is a thick block of record company propaganda that could shatter the wrists of an infant. What I got was 30 pages of relatively the same interview done by 12 different reporters. Interspersed among the articles are matching album reviews that use eclectic superlatives more suited to describe a nifty header by a British soccer player or the sexual abilities of a psychic or a really bitchin’ Monster Truck show.

Anyway, I found that reading the record company band bio for the relatively new Toronto group, Our Lady Peace, is like receiving a rectal examination from a dentist. A dentist armed with power tools from a red tag sale at Beaver Lumber, who is totally sadistic due to the general stress from ceaselessly looking down the hideous throats of unnecessarily unhygenic people. Then, apply that tsunami of hostility to designing a document that's supposed to promote a rock band.

The band bio is vile and annoying and redundant. Not because Our Lady Peace is not a good band. Our Lady Peace is an excellent band, even though they’re only in the inaugural stages of what could turn into an exquisite career in the bratty little genre of rock ‘n’ roll. The band bio bites because it attempts to give Our Lady Peace the praise they deserve and instead it comes across as a mundane, one-sided informercial for record buying zombies, not spirited fans.

In some spots, Our Lady Peace is compared to a Pearl Jam/Soundgarden concoction. This bunk beginning (i.e. is your head on Earth and your ears on Pluto?) leads into even more unconsciously whacked comparisons.

The ultimate in tacky criticism, the oddest morsel in the trough of preconceived notions, the diamond diarrhea of crappy reviews comes when Our Lady Peace is compared to Led Zeppelin. Not to take anything away from either band, but that's like finding out that a Drag Queen with a peacock hat and fruit salad dress, with cleavage burgeoning like the bugged-out eyes of a kid losing his Toys-R-Us virginity, is really a blue-collar redneck suburbanite father, whose Godzilla king cab-truck looms in front of his lavender brown duplex that houses his one normal wife (she's having an affair), his three normal kids (the teenage girls who are anorexic and the boy who is well on his way to becoming a pyromaniac), and one normal cat (who probably leads a double life two houses down, with a family that originally mistook it as a stray).

Yeah, comparing Our Lady Peace to Zeppelin necessitates a nasty little run-on sentence.

Our Lady Peace's lead singer, Raine Maida, called from Pennsylvania to be interviewed. Eager to talk, what follows is the words of a man seemingly unscathed by a dash into the zeniths of rock and candid revelations of the noticeable experiences endured during that dash.

Enjoy. I did.

PEAK: Your singles and album have been received pretty well in the United States, eh?

Raine Maida: Yeah. We're lucky.

PEAK: [You may want to precede this next comment with a goofy and stumbling, “duh, gee. . .”] You think so?

Raine: Well, I mean, I think there’s tones of good music that just doesn’t make it down here [in the US]. We were fortunate to have “Starseed” [single from Naveed] do as well as it did; kinda give us some ground to keep touring and get in front of more peoples' faces down here. Most bands, especially a lot of Canadian bands that do well in Canada, they get a single released down here. [If the single] doesn’t happen, they tour for like a week or two then they kinda have to leave. We’ve been touring nonstop for like nine months, ten months, so we’ve made a huge dent in the American market.

PEAK: I was wondering what the university background brings to the band?

Raine: Uh, I don’t know. I ended up taking criminology at University of Toronto just because I got really bored and music was pulling me away from the typical political science and sociology courses, so criminology seemed to be like the only thing that kinda made me want to get up in the morning and go to school after rehearsing until two at night. I never planned to use it anyway, other than, uh... I think all university is kinda there to make you more of an analytical thinker, but criminology, really kinda makes you delve into your own head I guess, because a lot of the time you are studying peoples' psyches. In that respect, it put a kinda different twist in some of my lyrics.

PEAK: [This is where I really start to assume the half-wit simpleton persona] Um, I have this vision sorta in my head of, “This institution thing sucks. Let's form a rock band”; how did it work for you guys?

Raine: It's not that, uh... I think we’re all pretty big on education and university, it’s just, you know, I think music is just where our hearts are. That type of creativity you can't just shut off, so ultimately it kinda took over, and as soon as we found the right people, we had to put school aside. University will always be there. This kind of opportunity, you know, the chance to make music and go out and play, is unique.

PEAK: Constant comparisons to Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, even a little Led Zeppelin [what follows is a question that should have been definitely rephrased, but the simpleton had inhaled my persona], what do you think you guys sound like?

Raine: Ah, man, I don’t know. I know we opened up for Led Zeppelin, for Page and Plant and did a bunch of shows with them in Chicago and Cincinnati, but I don't think we sound anything like them. We were never Led Zeppelin fans. Even after watching them play, after hearing all the people comparing us, especially me with my voice to Plant, it's not even close.

I don't know. I think people are just reaching for stuff. We've heard so many different comparisons that you can't put your finger on one. I don't think it's a problem. If everyone said, “you guys sound like REM,” and that was a consistent across-the-board comparison, I'd be a little worried.

PEAK: I read that you like to keep the writing as “emotionally open-ended as possible,” I was left sorta wondering, where does politics fit in with this band? In terms of, you see somebody like Sting being a political advocate through his music. Where does that fit in with you guys?

Raine: I don’t think it really does. There's a bunch of issues that we stand pretty firm on and will talk about and be aggressive about. But for the most part, the things that happen to us and me in particular, in terms of what I write in my lyrics, are not that unique. And there's no reason for me to sit on a fuckin’ pedestal and preach.

That’s probably one of my biggest fears. It's much more important to leave things so the listener can connect. That's what music's about for me, it's about connecting, and if you’re preaching, they either like it or they don't and they either agree with or... it gets too cut and dry. There’s not a whole lotta room for that weird psychic connection, where you feel like, “Oh, maybe he's talking about something that happened in my life.” You know, I'm probably not. But, it’s important for other people to take that perspective.

PEAK: I’m wondering, how important Canadian identity is to you guys?

Raine: It’s really important. And, at first it was tough. Like "Starseed" started doing so well down here that no one even questioned that we weren't an American band. So, we'd keep going on all these radio stations and people thought we were from like Washington and Cleveland and all these places, and we had to say, "No, we're from Toronto. We're Canadian."

It's quite important because there is a difference. And sometimes, you kinda walk into some of these radio stations and you feel like such an outcast being Canadian, because they just have no perception of what Canada is. What goes on the US, and really it's essentially not that different from Canada, but, there are a few key points that we like to make note of. One is definitely the guns.

PEAK: Does the whole existing structure of the rock ‘n’ roll business ever start to seem stupid or redundant or boring to you?

Raine: Well, you know what, we really isolate ourselves. We’re on our tour bus, and we do as little business as possible. There is obviously a lot of major decisions involved in what we're doing, and for the most part, we kinda take care of that first thing in the morning. You know, the rest of the day and the rest of the week, we try to just focus on writing and playing live every night and being involved with the music.

PEAK: With so many comparisons to the Seattle scene and with people thinking that you are American, does it ever get frustrating that people are just generalizing?

Raine: It does, but that's the nature of people. They either have to categorize it or compare it to something, just to put some sort of curve on where they're coming from; I sort of understand that. Hopefully, this band by the next record will find its own sound and escape all those comparisons. We'll see. Maybe not. Maybe we will put out a Pearl Jam record or something.

Our Lady Peace have an upcoming stint with Matthew Sweet, and a headlining tour across Canada (which stops in Vancouver, at the Commodore in the first week of December).


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