Canadian rockers not afraid of honesty

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This article was published 20/03/2018 (3094 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you ask Raine Maida, Our Lady Peace is in the best place of its career.

Their current tour, on which OLP shares headlining status with fellow CanCon icon Matthew Good, has been steadily selling out shows across the country and the frontman says their ninth full-length album, Somethingness, released last month, contains some of the most honest work the band has produced in its 24 years.

He credits this in part to the renewed energy brought in by drummer Jason Pierce (who replaced the original man behind the kit, Jeremy Taggart, after he left in 2014), as well as an unvarnished recording tactic — “no tricks, no smoke and mirrors, no overdubs; it’s just raw,” Maida says.

“Everything happened really quickly; we went into the studio and the band, skill-wise, is just at a different level, so we just recorded everything live off the floor — set up together, played together and hit record.

“Especially with technology and how people record nowadays, it’s easy to micromanage and re-record things and fix things and make drums sound perfect, but it really wasn’t necessary. I think there’s an energy in the music and an honesty in the music that we haven’t been able to capture in a while that we did on this record and it’s because of that. It comes down to confidence and musicianship.”

Maida has never shied away from voicing his liberal-minded opinions, so it should be no surprise the current political climate crept into his writing on this album. It’s not blatant, but even the title Somethingness gives vibes of the uncertainty and frustration that seem to be hovering over everything.

“I feel like the last couple years — I live in the U.S., been in Los Angeles for almost 20 years now — just seeing the transition politically where we are, it’s the polarization, having to pick sides, that has never felt this strong in my life. So I feel like there’s no way that wouldn’t have made it into the record, because it’s so powerful in my psyche and I struggle with it every day,” he says.

“It’s just the idea of, like, we know what we want to do as global citizens, or as a human race, and we’re trying to do that, and every few days it’s like, wow, now we just took three steps back. How does that even happen? I feel like it’s such a roller-coaster ride emotionally, politically and socially — I’ve never really experienced anything this divisive or polarizing.

“So it’s daily thing, and I feel like everyone is struggling with it. There’s not a lot of dialogue happening that is productive, if that makes sense.”

Despite the fact both Our Lady Peace and Matthew Good are promoting new music, “nostalgia” is a word that has been thrown around a lot when referencing this tour. Though nostalgia can sometimes carry a negative connotation, Maida says the band is always excited to play versions of their biggest hits, including Clumsy, Superman’s Dead and Starseed, and appreciates the fact their fans’ passion for those tracks has lasted for decades.

“I think we all honour the fact that we’re selling out arenas here because people love those songs,” he says.

“I think it’s amazing how we can go into a show and say, ‘OK, we have this body of work and what do we want to play?’ And, like I said, the musicianship in this band now is at the level where we can take a song like Clumsy and do an acoustic version one night. I think what people are finding, even though we’re only a few shows in, is that the set is different every night, and they’re still getting everything they want, and we are as artists as well; we feel challenged.

“I think people can be pretty confident that the songs they want to hear, you’re probably going to hear most of them, and we love them just as much as the new stuff.

“When I look back on everything, I think, ‘Man, we are so fortunate to be able to do this the way we do it.’”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel