Canada’s OUR LADY PEACE are back with a new album called Curve. I say that with joy and relief.

There’s 2 sides to the band, pre Gravity and post Spiritual Machines. There’s 2 sides to their fans: the one’s that loved their early, alternate rock and criticize the modern; the youth who only know them through modern radio and are too momentary to dig into their glorious, dirtier past.

Actually, there must be a 3rd lot as i’ve enjoyed OLP in both forms, from the sincerity of ‘Are You Sad’ to the air-lifting, made for airplay chorus of ‘Somewhere Out There’. Our acceptance makes us a minority. But as much as there’s righteousness in feeling different, experiencing joy that you don’t have to share with the whole goddamn world, there’s the contradictory yearning to share.

Earlier i said “relief” because those bi-polarities are faced with extinction as Curve, the latest album from OUR LADY PEACE, strikes a balance whilst suggesting new direction.

Like Tea Party, Dredg and more, OUR LADY PEACE is famous without ever having made it. They’ve won awards, earned fans but never achieved Godhood in that sick world of Billboard. Consequently, most of my fellow South Africans will never have heard them. Although this album won’t change that equation, it possesses the ability to send some new listeners exploring the duality of their past. Importantly, the band sound less comfortable but happier as they explore music too. The story they tell of a retired boxer may well be a metaphor for themselves.

Curve assures that OUR LADY PEACE remains famous to me.

Best tracks are ‘Heavyweight’, ‘Fire in the Henhouse’, ‘Rabbits’, ‘If This is It’ and ‘As Fast As You Can’.