Nostalgia is big business. No one will argue that, and since the 90’s have never been more popular, package tours of 90’s acts are a dime a dozen.
Yet, while there was plenty of nostalgia on hand last Tuesday night at the Belasco, the show was far from a nostalgia cash-in. The two bands playing that night, Our Lady Peace (celebrating 30 years as a band), and The Verve Pipe, we’re both playing at the top of their games, mixing in newer material with their hits, and paying homage to the era of music that gave rise to them.
Some of you readers may remember when The Verve Pipe came back on my radar in 2021 with their incredible single “Forever Reaching.” While that post was written with full reverence, it did perhaps do a disservice to the band, who had been actively releasing music the years prior, and who have continued to release solid new records, most recently with last years Reconciled. The band, fronted by the towering presence of Brian Vander Ark, hit the stage and blasted into 1999’s “Photograph.” Immediately it was clear that the band was not coasting. They quite simply rocked. The band’s playing was tight, with each member playing off each other with undeniable panache.
Vander Ark’s powerful vocals were on full display on “Cup of Tea,” and Channing Lee provided a passionate female counter vocal to his. The band’s guitarist and bassist ripped on throwback “Villains” and “Dust” from their new album. For the most part, Vander Ark kept banter to a minimum, but did introduce “Colorful” as an original written for the film ROCKSTAR, and quipped that Mark Wahlberg wasn’t quite a fan of the song (I may have misheard that, so apologies if I did). Personally I’m a fan of the acoustic-driven track, and it provided a nice, serene moment in between the more active rocks songs in the set. Vander Ark then kicked things up a notch in the performance area for “Medicate Myself,” giving the track a theatricality I wouldn’t have expected.
And then it was time for the big single – “The Freshmen.” The iconic song had everyone in the room singing to every word. Even after all these years, it remains moving and timeless. If the band had called it a night after that, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but they weren’t finished. What were they going to pull out? My money was on their great 2001 song “Never Let You Down” but instead, they decided to pay homage to another 90’s great, Soundgarden, breaking out a strong cover of “Black Hole Sun.”
A video montage began Our Lady Peace‘s set, celebrating the band’s three decades as one of the best Canadian rock exports. It was an acknowledgement of their history, but the band made it clear when they hit the stage and went into the energetic 2024 single “Sound the Alarm” that they weren’t going to be fully dwelling on the past with this celebration. The music they’ve been releasing the last twenty years is just as strong as their 90’s material, and they touched upon plenty of it throughout the set.
That’s not to say the band didn’t mine their deeper catalog, as they followed the opener with the 1997 hit “Superman’s Dead” and then 1999’s “One Man Army.” Frontman Raine Maida’s voice proved perfectly intact, reaching every high note and falsetto, and still commanding the audience attention. And the audience was certainly enraptured, though I was a little disappointed by the lack of active singing along to the great “Innocent” (when they played this at the Troubadour a few years prior, EVERYONE was singing it). It may be the crowd wasn’t warmed up enough yet.
The band broke out their first deep cut of the night, the beautiful “Bring Back the Sun,” which Raine admitted wasn’t one they played often. The audience seemed to be waking up, as the band went back in the catalog to “Is Anybody Home?” and then “RK 2029,” explaining that track’s inspiration first about the parts of the future that have come true, and their hopes that AI will be a boon for society. Whether you agreed with that or not, no one could argue with happiness that bassist Duncan Coutts beat prostate cancer. Maida recounted when the band learned the news years earlier, and was ready to put a halt on releasing their 2000 album and filming the videos for it, but that Coutts told them to continue on. It gave new meaning to the song “Life,” which finally got the audience raising their voices and arms to sing their hearts out.
As I mentioned, this was not a show fully focusing on the past, and the band proved it by playing a brand new, unreleased song called “Once.” And as expected, the song was great – the band still has things to say, and great new material to come. No word on when it will come out – they had only recorded it two weeks prior, but I’m guessing we’ll get it sometime this year. They then hit us with the percussive 2018 single “Drop Me in the Water,” which has earned its place as a live staple.
If there was one moment of the evening I would have changed, it was the band’s decision to cover Pearl Jam‘s “Hail Hail.” While I appreciated how Raine wanted to pay homage to the band, and meeting his wife at their show, but when the band has so many great originals I would have killed to hear them play, the cover felt unnecessary for a 30th Anniversary show. Come on guys – how about playing a song from 2009’s Burn Burn or 2005’s Healthy in Paranoid Times?
Thankfully the band did bring out the powerful “Somewhere Out There” which was left out of their Troubadour setlist the first time I saw them. This performance was epic, and was the start of a parade of fan favorites to close out the main set; “4am” and “Clumsy.” While these songs were probably massive hits in Canada, the band’s U.S. fanbase treated them like Nirvana playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
For the encore, the band played the newer “Temporary Healing” from 2022’s Spiritual Machines II (surprising me as I thought they would have gone with the perfect “Stop Making Stupid People Famous”), and then closed out with two other classic hits; “Automatic Flowers” and the heavy-hitting “Starseed.” You know you’ve seen a good show when the band finishes and you still want more. Our Lady Peace deserve more love when talk of 90’s music comes up. They have proven themselves to be one of the best surviving bands from that era, and I will always look forward to any new music they put out.
So until we get “Once”, catch the band on tour, and listen to their great catalog here.
The Indy Review 