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Our
Lady Peace
Gravity
label: Sony
released: 06.18.02
our score: 2.5 out of 5.0
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For years now
Our Lady Peace have been one of the more popular rock groups in
and from our North-of-the-border neighbors, Canada. Still the
band never really garnered the level of popularity in the States
it did in its home country.
This could have been
due to many reasons, most notably that the band could easily be
lumped in with many of the other bands birthed of the post-grunge
era. While Naveed and Clumsy both held a few
radio hits and were fairly strong albums in their own rights,
Our Lady Peace's third album Happiness... Is Not A Fish That
You Can Catch failed to appease the burgeoning fanbase the
band had begin to amass.
Continuing what could
be considered an alienation from their version of the tried-and-true
modern rock formula, the band returned with the concept album
Spiritual Machines. With Spiritual Machines
the band ventured further into less-charted sonic territories
and lyrical cohesiveness than their musical peers, delivering
their strongest to date. They were a rock band going someplace
interesting, though they still hadn't quite achieved the level
of greatness so many believed they could reach.
Unfortunately for
the music world Gravity finds the band abandoning almost
all sense of what they'd learned over the years before. Fueled
in part by the departure of original guitarist, Mike Turner, as
well as lead singer Raine Maida's new musical focus for the band,
Gravity fails to transcend the level of pop-rock mediocrity
as all Our Lady Peace albums in the past had done.
This new musical
approach offers an album of modern rock-radio nuggets, ripe with
jarring power chords, lush vocal harmonization, and little real
depth. Of equal note is the near absence of Maida's trademark
falsetto and vocal ingenuity.
The album's greatest
successes are the ballad-esque anthem songs such as "Somewhere
Out There," "Not Enough" and "Made of Steel."
Following the same formula as Our Lady Peace's biggest radio success
to date, "Clumsy," they're tracks which sound ultimately
to be nothing more than radio-fodder.
For a band who had
earned a listener base by ever-improving their own trademark
sound, Our Lady Peace seems intent on finally striking it big
with Gravity. In the end, however, it's more likely they'll
lose out on retaining a long-time fanbase and end up with the
support of the casual listener - a listener who will be more than
happy to abandon them as soon as something new comes along. Gravity
is by no means something new.
06-Aug-2002
11:32 PM
If you
liked Gravity...
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Tracklist:
1. All For You
2. Do You Like It
3. Somewhere Out There
4. Innocent
5. Made Of Steel
6. Not Enough
7. Sell My Soul
8. Sorry
9. Bring Back The Sun
10. A Story About A Girl
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