Our Lady PeaceOur Lady Peace is a Canadian rock band consisting of Raine Maida (vocals), Duncan Coutts (bass), Jeremy Taggart (drums), and Steve Mazur (Guitar).
BackgroundOur Lady Peace was founded in 1992 when Mike Turner placed a "musicians wanted" ad in a Toronto newspaper. Responding first was Michael (Raine) Maida, a criminology student at the University of Toronto. Later, 17-year-old Jeremy Taggart and Chris Eacrett joined the band. Eacrett left in 1995, replaced by Duncan Coutts. Turner left in 2001, replaced by Steve Mazur. Our Lady Peace became famous around 1995 with the release of "Starseed", a song from their first album Naveed and which also appeared on the Armageddon soundtrack. Later, in 1997, the songs "Superman's Dead" and "Clumsy", from their second album, Clumsy, established the band as an important figure in 1990s rock music, both in Canada and in the United States. The Music of Our Lady PeaceOur Lady Peace can safely be classified within the alternative rock genre. The lyrics, especially in the earlier albums, have been asserted, by fans and critics, to operate at a deeper intellectual and emotional level than most popular modern rock in the Generation Y era. Naveed and Clumsy carry themes of death and spirituality along with an emotional intensity. Raine Maida's voice, characterized as "strange" and "paranoid" by some, adds a unique and undefinable aura to the band's music. The year 1999 saw the release of Happiness Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch. The title track of the album, "Happiness & The Fish", was not released as a single but is credited for spawning the catch-phrase, "Talking is just masturbating without the mess." In 2000, Our Lady Peace released Spiritual Machines, a concept album inspired by Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines. Throughout the 2000s, perhaps because of a younger audience, the musical releases of Our Lady Peace changed significantly. Albums retained a high level of quality, but themes and sound became increasingly mainstream, and Maida's voice lost its "paranoid" edge. Critics of the band's fifth album, Gravity, referred to it as "overproduced" and "too mainstream". In 2003, Our Lady Peace released the album Live, a compilation of fourteen tracks from live performances. Our Lady Peace also released a DVD under the same name, featuring 22 tracks, including all the tracks from their Live album. It is said that Our Lady Peace's next record will be released in March 2005, and while a name is yet to be announced, rumoured posibilities include Vampires and Unusual Amount of Common Sense. Discography
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Categories: Canadian musical groups | Rock music groups |
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