Our Lady Peace returned to Ottawa on Tuesday, Dec. 12, and they rocked the apital once again. The win to get in club tour in support of their new album, Spiritual Machines, influenced by Ray Kurzweil's book, "Age of Spiritual Machines", was a loud, emotion-filled, gutsy success. The performance was aided by the small venue, and great sound made it even better. To make it even better, lead singer Rain Maida's voice, usually cracking like fireworks for the first few songs, was perfect right off the bat. The show was delayed almost 20 minutes, presumably because Rain was warming up his voice, and the crowd was treated to many of the hits from the Beatles during the wait, a prelude of what was to come. The first half of the show was everything form the new album, and it all sounded new and fresh, including a spoken piece from Kurzweil at the beginning, an excerpt from his book. The solos and distrotion all sounded very OLP-like, but very different as well. After the new album, the first song played was Car Crash. It was moody and flowed nicely, and really geared up the crowd to hear all their old favorites. One Man Army, Clumsy, Superman's Dead, Naveed, Thief, and Automatic Flowers all vibrated through the tiny pub, along with an absolutely incredible drum solo by drummer Jeremy Taggart to end the second half of the concert. After a short break, during which the crowd was treated to more Beatles, Rain came back onto the stage alone. He proceded to play an abridged, accoustic version of 4am, and he let the crowd sing a lot of it as he played solo. Once he had finished this, the rest band came on stage again, and they announced that they would play for another half hour. They opened the encore with 2 Beatles covers, as foreshadowed, Tomorrow Never Knows and Imagine. Then they played Is Anybody Home, Super Satellite, followed by Starseed, to close the show. The overall show was amazing, and everyone left with their ears ringing and thier feet still jumping. It was a very fullfilling show, and it shows that even a big band like OLP can still have a lot of success playing in clubs. Every one who didnt rush out to buy the cd that day, surely has it now after that rockin concert. |