TORONTO – Scoring a bestselling album is often the goal, but hitting the big time in the United States almost ripped Our Lady Peace apart.
Following a string of successful records in Canada, the band finally made a big dent in the U.S. with 2002’s gold-selling “Gravity.”
But after that, OLP’s label wasn’t interested in a follow-up; they wanted a sequel.
“It turned out to be a disaster,” L.A.-based vocalist Raine Maida admits. “The label wanted us to make Gravity part two and it just wasn’t working because that’s not how we work.”
Paired with proven hit-maker Bob Rock, 2005’s politically-charged “Healthy in Paranoid Times” was a sales disappointment that almost led to the band breaking up.
“There were a couple of times where I walked out of the studio,” the 40-year-old says. “I felt I couldn’t work with Bob anymore because he was being manipulated by the record company. The label kept saying, ‘We don’t hear a single,’ and we all felt pressured.
“For the first time in our musical careers we felt a wall had gone up and none of us had ever wanted to make music under those terms.”
Known for their energetic live shows, the band – rounded out by guitarist Steve Mazur, bassist Duncan Coutts and drummer Jeremy Taggart – didn’t do an extensive tour behind the disc and went their separate ways.
Maida went on to record his first solo effort at his home-studio in California, and contributed to albums by ‘American Idol’ alumni Kelly Clarkson and David Cook.
And it was that experience that convinced the gravelly-voiced frontman there was still plenty of juice left for OLP to squeeze.
“We had done a small tour of Canada and the States that gave us a new perspective. But the easiest thing was for me to convince the band to come to L.A. and make an album there the way I did my solo record.
“It’s a total creative environment and there’s nothing intimidating there,” he says. “Pretty soon everyone was like, ‘This is great. Let’s make a record like this.’”
Released last year, the Maida-produced “Burn Burn” found OLP returning to the high-voltage anthems they mined on earlier releases “Naveed” and “Clumsy.”
“There have been a lot of songs on previous records where we made compromises,” he says. “We don’t play them live, we don’t talk about them. But we were in a position this time to never let that happen again.
“There was no time constraints, no budget constraints and there was no one in the studio to say no. It was just four guys trusting our own instincts with no compromises.”
And what the foursome discovered was that the gutsy emotion they laid out on early hits like ‘Clumsy’ and ‘Innocent’ is what kept them relevant, in spite of career hiccups.
“We finally realized that’s what’s great about this band,” he says.
With OLP about to embark on a cross-Canada tour that will see them playing two fan-picked albums in their entirety – 1997’s “Clumsy” and 2000’s concept record “Spiritual Machines” – Maida says the new tunes have a timeless quality that mesh well with the older songs.
“We’ve played songs like ‘Clumsy’ on almost every tour because that’s where we see a connection,” he says. “But with ‘Burn Burn’ the expectations were, ‘Does this make the hairs on the backs of our neck stand up? When we go play this live, is it going to be one of those songs where we look at each other and say, ‘F--- that was amazing?’
“Now, I think we’re at a really great place. And in terms of our live shows, I’ve never been so excited to get onstage.”
Our Lady Peace play Massey Hall Friday, March 12, and Saturday, March 13, as part of Canadian Music Week
