Relics of rock: Our Lady Peace still going strong

October 19, 2009 by Jordan Healy 

Canadian alternative rockers Our Lady Peace have been a presence in the rock scene since 1992 and this year, they release their long-awaited seventh album titled “Burn Burn.”

The group will perform Thursday at the Rio. Here’s vocalist Raine Maida on the new record:

The Rebel Yell: Your new album is titled “Burn Burn,” which is a reference to Jack Kerouac’s novel, “On The Road.” What was the inspiration behind choosing this title?

Raine Maida: For anyone that’s read that book, it’s a classic. Finding yourself, finding some sort of freedom or liberty within yourself. In poetic terms, flying above the status quo. The parallel for me was this record was our first record that wasn’t on Columbia Records. We were able to do it on our own, without any interference from a record label. It was really liberating in terms of being creative, just four guys in a rock band trusting their instincts without having to adhere to an outside producer or any other guy at the label in management. It just felt very pure that way.

RY: Would you say this sense of freedom contributed to your work lyrically and musically when it came to writing the songs?

RM: Yeah. I think that there’s a lot of that kind of thinking on this record. There’s a song called “The End Is Where We Begin” – there’s another parallel for that. The last record we made [2005’s “Healthy In Paranoid Times”] compared to this one. It definitely feels like it’s kind of a new beginning for the band.

RY: Now that you’re free of Columbia Records, which label have you moved to, if any?

RM: We made the record on our own, recorded it ourselves and partnered up with a division of Warner Bros. Records called ILG, Independent Label Group.
We own the masters and we get to take advantage of some of their infrastructure, so I don’t have to worry about calling radio stations because that’s the last thing I want to do.
It’s definitely a partnership and that works for us. Giving up ownership of the masters, I can’t ever imagine doing that again.

RY: This is also the first record where you haven’t used an outside producer and you took it upon yourself to do the production. Did you prefer doing it this way?

RM: I’m a huge Brian Eno fan. He’s just a heavyweight in terms of music and art and culture. He’s a guy whose whole mentality is about collaboration. I love collaboration and if you write a song and someone sits in the room with you, even if they’re not being a part of it, the fact that someone else is there causes your brain to synapse and fire differently just because there’s someone else sitting there. I wouldn’t say that we’d never work with another outside producer again, but I think for this point in time and circumstances and the pain in the ass that the last record was to make on Columbia, we just kind of needed to get away from that whole situation, just really get introverted and do this more on our own. I loved producing it, but I would never say that’s the way we have to do it from now on.

RY: How does it feel to be one of the few bands from the 1990s who has maintained the same relative level of success? What’s the secret to longevity in a band?

RM: I don’t know. It might be something to the extent that we never felt we fit into a genre, you know? When we first started we were doing all the radio festivals throughout the country. We never felt like we fit in with all of those bands, like Third Eye Blind, and all that shit was so poppy and didn’t feel like us. Later on, in the early 2000s, we had a record called “Gravity” come out and we were doing those festivals again, but all of a sudden we were playing with Korn and Staind. We didn’t fit into that stuff either. I think there’s something to be said for not fitting into a genre because you get to stick around when that genre doesn’t. I just thought of that right now [laughs].

RY: How do you feel this album differs from your previous albums?

RM: The M.O. for this record was really to make stuff that we want to play live. It wasn’t really about trying to get on the radio. At this point, we feel like we have our fan base, so if a song comes up that can get on the radio, awesome. If not, it’s really about bringing this to our fans and playing it live. That was really the whole thing. We tried to basically record this record live off the floor. If a particular song idea wasn’t working when we were all bringing it together, we would never go hit record. If we had to go add on five guitar tracks and some other shit to make this feel like a good song, for this record we didn’t
want to do that. The idea was to keep it really live. It was just the four of us and we made a record.

RY: Do you feel that the yearning to keep the album more live came from the extended break between the new album and the last, which was released in August 2005? Without a record to push, did you feel that it would have been a good idea to tour?

RM: Definitely the touring part was a factor. The last two records were made with a guy named Bob Rock. He’s worked with everyone from Metallica to… I don’t know, he made the “Black” (Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album) record and that’s all you need to know [laughs]. He’s one of those guys whose a producer’s producer. He loves to really add everything and the kitchen sink on songs and they sound amazing. A backlash isn’t exactly the right word, but we wanted to go against that grain for once and make a record that we didn’t have to spend like three or four days on one song. We would get a song in the morning, arrange it and record that afternoon. If it didn’t happen in like three or four takes, we would probably scrap it. We did everything completely opposite on this record.

RY: How many of ideas that were presented for the album were rejected?

RM: The thing was, we would never let the ideas become a song if there was something that felt forced. Whether it was a lyric, a verse or a chorus, we would just bail on the idea. If anything ever felt like we
were trying to hard or forcing it then we just left it. In terms of full-song ideas, there’s probably only like three extra songs that aren’t on the record. Nothing else was really ever taken that far.

RY: After the fall tour winds down for “Burn Burn,” what are future plans for Our Lady Peace?

RM: Right now, we’re talking to Stone Temple Pilots about maybe going on a tour with them. I think we’re going to keep touring into the new year, at least until the summer. This was a long time between records for us. We’re going to make another record quickly. I think everyone is pretty amped to do that since it went so well the first time. We’re not going away anytime soon.