Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
need to step back and take a look..., July 24, 2009
I will start off by saying that I am slightly disappointed with the CD (why 4-stars then? read on). It does not compare to a lot of their previous work, but I think there is reason for this.
I was somewhat aware of OLP when Naveed came out, but it wasn't until Clumsy came out in 1997 that OLP became my favorite band. I have seen them 8 or 9 times live since then, and for the most part, they have been my favorite band for 12 years.
To me, OLP's musical timeline looks just like a bell curve. Naveed was good...with Clumsy, they started to tap into what made them great. I think that musically, lyrically, conceptually, Happiness And Spiritual Machines are their peak. Those 2 CDs were superb, my 2 favorite albums of all time for any band. This is where the band starts to slip. Maybe it was just age, maybe the creative juices dried up, maybe it was because Mike Turner took his songwriting style with him when he left. But Gravity is a great rock record, it just wasn't a great OLP record. Paranoid was the same, but more so. It was a good CD, but less OLP than before, further down from the top or the curve. As every die-hard fan of any band does, when I hear that a new OLP CD comes out, I always have high hopes..."maybe this one will be just like Happiness..., or Spiritual Machines." But its not.
Think about this though...when they were writing Naveed and Clumsy, these guys were in their mid 20's. Now, soon to be 40, their perspective on life is different. There is less immediacy and raw emotion in someone who is 40 with kids than a young, hungry 25 year old. I think that comes across in the music. Think about most bands who have lasted longer than a decade in the music business. Is their 10th album ever even close to the first couple? As a function of becoming more mature, you lose a little of the edge.
All this being said, I believe that this new CD is a good rock record with catchy melodies and some interesting song structure that is pretty well put together. If I wanted to turn a non-OLP fan onto the band, I would never hand them this CD. Its not Vintage OLP, and we most likely wont see that ever again, but as one of the other reviewers said "some OLP is better than no OLP." Very true statement.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing but glad that they're still together, August 7, 2009
I'm still holding out hope that the band will rediscover the majic of their earlier work. Like many of the reviewers, I've been a fan since the beginning, getting hooked immediately with Naveed and watching them grow sonically and musically with each album through Spiritual Machines. I was able to see them live on that tour and was able to see them at their peak. I heard an interview with Raine on XM last winter in which he mentioned that the band nearly broke up while making the new album. I wanted to believe that they were getting back to their roots with a stripped down sound as they announced on their site but knew what was coming when I heard the uninspired single. Like the other huge OLP fans that have written reviews, it's so hard not to compare the current CDs with the absolutely brilliant music that they put out in the 1990's. Dreamland, Refuge and Paper Moon are good songs but when you put them up against their earlier work, there is no comparison. Steve Mazur is an excellent guitarist but I agree that they lost a lot of their soul when Mike Turner left the band and I would love to see what would come out of a reuniting of the original band. With the release of the Greatest Hits CD and the long wait for Burn Burn, I was afraid that we had seen the last of them. Despite being underwhelmed with the new material, I'm grateful that there is still hope of great Our Lady Peace music sometime soon.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bad Our Lady Peace is still better than no Our Lady Peace, July 23, 2009
Forget all the talk about "selling out" and this album sounding too "mainstream." With every album release there's always going to be someone making those claims.
Truth be told for a Rock album, this isn't great. It's average at best. For an Our Lady Peace album this album is simply disappointing and bland. As a rock album I give it 3 stars, but compared to the other OLP CD's I'd give this 1 star out of 5 because it's by far my least favorite album of theirs thus far. The album lacks any sort of musical teeth. It's just melodic drivel with Raine's unique vocals placed...and I do mean "placed" on top. This is a band capable of a very driving and unique biting sound. Raine's unique falsetto, completely absent on this album. Raine's vocals on this CD sound uninspired and absent of emotion. He's just singing words placed over the most basic rock sound. The bands hard driving rock sound...also gone.
The most disappointing thing about this CD is it could have been released by ANY rock band, but fortunately it's Our Lady Peace....which is all that saves it for me. Because to me, even a bad Our Lady Peace CD is better than a lot of rock that's out there.
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