Give Our Lady Peace A Chance

11/18/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Sandy Masuo

The music Our Lady Peace creates is frequently a life-and-death affair. Or at least it is for frontman Raine Maida, thanks to his criminal past.

Years ago, when the lure of rock 'n' roll was pulling him away from his studies at the University Of Toronto, the criminology program kept him on track for his degree. Maida says he's never felt the urge to profile the complex characters that crop up in his songs, but his education did leave an indelible mark on the way he looks at music.

"It taught me to not take the typical view of situations that you're nurtured into," he explains. "I really try in the lyrics to find some sort of faith, some sort of positivity out of stuff that's really dark. You know, a kid sitting in his room with a shotgun thinking, does he stick it in his mouth or stick it at the TV?--hopefully turning that around to make it into some sort of compassionate scenario. To look at this kid, instead of being a loser, as someone that just needs a hug. Someone who just needs some time."

Our Lady Peace's latest, Happiness...Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, is full of subject matter that's dark, but as Maida points out, it's gloom with a purpose. Songs like the title track and "Potato Girl" are a means for working through ideas and emotions, not a bleak space for dwelling on the negative. Many of the lyrics address death, but far from being a morbid fixation, it's a product of Maida's desire to come to terms with death so he can live his life more freely.

"It's such a cliché, but the older you get and the more you have to face it, all of a sudden people start turning to religion," he says. "It's not a coincidence. For me it's about finding a place where I'm comfortable before I have to resort to religion. Because I'm scared to die right now, but I'd rather try to find a place while I'm still looking at hopefully 60 years of life rather than not thinking about it and leaving something really unsoulful and cliché to the last years of your life, when you finally realize that you're not immortal."

Since Our Lady Peace made its debut in 1994, it has never been content to settle into a comfortable sound. Though Naveed bristled with a certain grungy appeal, 1997's Clumsy found Maida and company--guitarist Mike Turner, drummer Jeremy Taggart, and bassist Duncan Coutts--diligently refining the band's sound. It's been a process of maturity in terms of playing (intensive touring has been one of the key ingredients to OLP's success) and a product of more focused songwriting. But for Maida, it's also been about coming to terms with the creative process.

"Over the last five years I've gotten [into] the craft of writing songs," Maida says. "You know, there are certain songs that happen in two minutes while you're just playing and writing and all of a sudden it's finished. That's when you realize it's like automatic writing--something you can't control, so why worry about it? Creativity is something that you just have to capture."