Review Summary: Our Lady Peace slips a little, but still puts forth a decent release.
For all the hate it gets, I didn't find Our Lady Peace's Gravity to be all that bad of an album. It doesn't really hold up to the band's earlier outputs, such as Clumsy or Happiness, of course, but it was excellent in its own right. Our Lady Peace's follow up to Gravity, 2005's Healthy in Paranoid Times, appears to present the logical continuation from its predecessor in a musical sense. Yet for all the quasi-progression in the Canadian band's sound, why is their sixth LP so frustrating to listen to? How does a band that penned classic songs such as Naveed, Superman's Dead, and 4 A.M. record forty tracks, cut down that number two twelve, and still come out with a fair amount of filler? While Healthy in Paranoid Times itself is decent album, it's fairly clear that it's easily the band's weakest offering.
You wouldn't know it the way the album begins, however. Each of the first five songs are rather infectious, showcasing the band at its song writing best. Much like Gravity, the instrumentation is fairly tame and takes a backseat to Raine Maida's singing, though Jeremy Taggart does seem get a little more involved than he did in Gravity. First single Angels/Losing/Sleep is the strongest offering to be heard off the album, and sounds as though the band took their Happiness Is Not A Fish sound and combined it with that of Gravity. The chorus, though somewhat repetitive, marks a brief return of Maida's higher range falsetto and is easily the most memorable the album has to offer. Will the Future Blame Us and Where Are You amp up the energy a fair bit through their fast-paced drumming from Taggart and lead riff by guitarist Steve Mazur, and are rather captivating listens, save for the grating
"Sons and daughters/Mothers and fathers" sing-along, which really kills the atmosphere. Picture is contemplative track, resembling some of the softer moments of Spiritual Machines. The song is an emotional offering, and perhaps does the best job of utilizing the entirety of the band's musical arsenal. But what makes these songs the strongest off Healthy In Paranoid Times (along with Apology, which is similar to Picture) is that they still maintain Our Lady Peace's identity, even with the more updated sound.
What brings Healthy in Paranoid Times down is the like of, well, quality tracks after that. Each of Boy, Love and Trust, Don't Stop, and World on a String are tired, tasteless offerings that bring little to the table and do little to impress. More shocking than that is just how uninspired they sound, given how the Our Lady Peace is usually rather interesting, both lyrically and musically. Also troubling is how lost the band sounds in some of these songs. Boy has the rockers opting for a clear U2 influence, whereas World on a String resembles Franz Ferdinand more than anything, but both songs showcase the band fiddling around for eight minutes without performing anything resembling the former dynamic maintained on their more well written works.
Overall, Healthy in Paranoid Times is still a decidedly good, listenable album. Though the filler creeps in as the album progresses, there are enough quality tracks ranging from Angels/Losing/Sleep to Apology to the emotional, haunting album closer, Al Genina (Leave The Light On) to make Our Lady Peace's latest album a worthwhile listen. Given that they had spent 1165 days preparing and recording forty the LP, it's rather disappointing that the band sometimes loses its focus and identity in a couple songs (World on a String is the biggest offender in this case). Despite Healthy in Paranoid Times being the weakest of Our Lady Peace's six albums, I still have rather high hopes for its follow up which should feature a rejuvenated Raine Maida (he should be anyways, given the excellence of his solo record) and the lack of a certain Bob Rock who apparently quit and was fired simultaneously. Our Lady Peace just has to maintain its identity, and the next album should mark an improvement.
Well, I can hope, right?
