EDMONTON -- Our Lady Peace hasn't quite become the profound art-rock band they obviously want to be - but they're getting close.

Just a few things stand in their way. The band's fans, for one thing, are largely teenagers who just wanna rock - in love with a band that wants to make them think, too.

It can be an awkward mix. You play four slow songs in a row filled with cryptic questions about mortality and you're bound to get some grumbling. The most that singer Raine Maida said during OLP's concert in Skyreach Centre last night concerned a young girl who had been infected with HIV.

"It's funny how the most brave and courageous people are children," he said.

Cheers ensued from the "children" in the crowd. The arena then fell silent as Maida recounted the story of Eve, the 10-year-old girl who travelled the world comforting other HIV-positive kids. The song inspired by the story is Stealing Babies, from the band's latest album, Happiness ... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch. It's an intense and fragmented rocker that ended with a jazzy section and, finally, a good minute of complete cacophony. The crowd loved it, sobering message or not.

Raine would later lead the crowd in chant: "This woman is God!" What that meant, I have no idea.

There were 5,000 rabidly loyal young fans who turned up to the show last night, raising Bics in the ballads and bellowing out the words to every hit they could. The crowd count was a substantial drop from the last time the band did our hockey arena (12,000 in 1998) and Our Lady Peace's eccentricities seemed to increase accordingly. Led by the Hamlet-like singer Maida, whose strident nasal bray is something you either hate or love, the band came across as wilder, less accessible, more experimental. The hit and miss show was equal parts intense angst and thought-provoking mellow. The various shadings in between were a welcome change from the "all quiet" or "all loud" dynamics of the band's fledgling years. As guitarist Mike Turner recently put it, "we've got a dimmer."

The concert seemed to be divided into distinct segments. The opening songs were accompanied by nothing but pink floodlights and Raine acting like an animated scarecrow who flopped over his mic stand whenever he wasn't singing. A cascade of sweeping white lights heralded the next phase of the show, as Raine actually began to move in songs like One Man Army. Soon, it was movie time. The much-hyped films the band members made turned out to be little better than home movies of people's kids. If they're going for a 22 Short Films About Our Lady Peace kind of thing, more work needs to be done - and a bigger movie screen, too, please.

But despite some tiny, annoying flaws, last night's concert gave some haunting hints of the band's potential greatness. Whatever it is they're going for, it's not quite there yet. Then again, they've only got three albums.

Opening the show was the Stereophonics - huge in Britain, unknown in Canada. The Welsh lads had to prove themselves from Square 1 and pretty much did the job, laying out the kind of happy, no-nonsense rock 'n' roll that's become the hallmark of many Canadian modern rock bands. They'll fit in just fine.