OLP RIP

It'd be so easy to be cynical regarding Raine Maida's first solo outing, The Hunters Lullaby (due out in a month or so). It'd be so easy to suggest that his reinvention/reincarnation as a "hip-hop-style beat-poet" probably has as more to do with the fact that no one cared any more about Our Lady Peace than any kind of artistic urges. In fact, part of me -- the part whose first vivid concert memory is attending Edgefest '97, where OLP headlined a bill that also featured The Tea Party, Collective Soul, Moist and I Mother Earth -- even wishes I could say that, shockingly, The Hunter's Lullabye is actually good, and that the sorta-depth Maida showed when his old band created Spiritual Machines has blossomed into something really special.

Sadly, however, that would be a lie. The Hunters Lullaby is bad. So very, very bad. So abysmally awful that I'm actually writing about it, rather than just letting it find its way into a CD contest winner's package without me ever thinking about it again. It features awkward, forced rhymes over extraordinarily mediocre music, and the result is so sadly pathetic that words fail me; download "Earthless" to hear the album at its absolute nadir, and then be aware that the rest of it isn't many degrees of awfulness away from that.

If this were five years ago, I'd describe The Hunters Lullaby as being a crushing blow to my teenage memories, as something that retroactively cheapened my love of mid-'90s Canadian alt-rock. That was my experience when I discovered 1) that Presidents of the United States of America had released an album funded in part by fan donations (royalty cheques from "Lump" and "Peaches", apparently hadn't lasted like it seemed they would), and 2) that it was really, painfully bad. As it stands now, however, years of apathy have ensured tat I can't even say hearing Raine Maida in his current state comes anywhere near that. If you're someone for whom Our Lady Peace remains a cherished memory, however...you should probably throw on your copy of Clumsy, and pretend the last decade hasn't been so unkind to that band.