Seeing Our Lady Peace at the Jack Singer Concert Hall over two nights, May 10th and 11th, showed a lot of contrasts between the band and its fans. It may have been the same band they certainly put on very different shows over the course of the two nights.
The first set was a carefully constructed album recreation, and then a "hits" package version. Everything in the first set was different from the second, from lighting to clothes to set design - the band played looping images on a screen for the first set, and had a light show for the second - to the general mood of the audience. They remained seated for the entire album, but when vocalist Raine Maida encouraged, "everyone get up and lets have fun" at the start of set two, they needed no encouragement.
May 10th's Clumsy show featured their most successful album. Strangely, after the title track the audience seemed to be lost slightly; they seemed mostly there to hear the singles off the album like Superman's Dead, Automatic Flowers and 4am. This seemed particularly true during the second set when the audience participated in giant sing-alongs for Life, Innocent, and Somewhere Out There. Unfortunately night 1 was also marred by muddy sound, probably acoustically one of the worst shows I have heard in the Jack Singer. During One Man Army I could barely make out Raine.
If Clumsy is for the "casual" fan, then night two's Spiritual Machines was for the diehards. The energy in the room, the crowd, everything about it seemed different. Sound issues from the previous night were resolved and the audience seemed far more receptive to the album portion compared to the night before.
That isn't to say that the show didn't have its downsides - the main one nothing to do with the band. Maida has always made it a point to get close to his audience during shows. While singing the single All You Did Was Save My Life he was climbing along the side mezzanie, and a woman literally almost dropped her breasts on his head. The crowd let out a horrified gasp (because trust me it was not pleasant.) Maida simply shook his head and continued away from the attention-seeking whore, although I am sure he will be haunted by it. Maybe it will lead to a song?
Night two was better, although the fans that splurged on tickets each night certainly got their money’s worth. Even Maida himself commented "I don't like to compare nights, but this is pretty great." For a band that has always drawn from the energy of its audience, it certainly showed the differences in performance.
OLP has their critics, certainly. Some of their recent music hasn't been great, some has been awesome. But as a live band with a huge catalogue of hits, an Our Lady Peace concert is always a fun time. The concept of performing an entire album added another fun aspect to a couple of amazing evenings with Our Lady Peace.
Setlist May 10 - Clumsy
- Superman's Dead
- Automatic Flowers
- Carnival
- Big Dumb Rocket
- 41m
- Shaking
- Clumsy
- Hello Oskar
- Let You Down
- The Story of 100 Aisles
- Car Crash
- Monkey Brains
- Innocent
- Life
- Is Anybody Home
- One Man Army
- Paper Moon
- Somewhere Out There
- Naveed
- All You Did Was Save My Life
- In Repair
- Starseed
Setlist May 11 - Spiritual Machines
- Right Behind You (Mafia)
- In Repair
- Life
- Middle of Yesterday
- Are You Sad
- Made To Heal
- Everyone's A Junkie
- All My Friends
- If You Believe
- The Wonderful Future
- Monkey Brains
- Superman's Dead
- Innocent
- One Man Army
- Clumsy
- Paper Moon
- Is Anybody Home
- Somewhere Out There
- Naveed
- All You Did Was Save My Life
- 4am
- Starseed
