Released: September 21, 1999
Our Lady Peace put the word happiness on an album full of people who cannot get comfortable with themselves or each other. The title practically invites a lesson about where they have gone wrong. The songs are less certain. On Happiness… Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, the compelling question is how much comfort a rock song can offer when the singer has no useful answers.
Released in Canada on September 21, 1999, the band’s third album featured Raine Maida, Mike Turner, Duncan Coutts, and Jeremy Taggart, with Arnold Lanni producing and Kevin Shirley mixing. Its arrangements give each player something to do beyond reinforcing the vocals. Short guitar figures repeat while the drums change around them, and the bass stays audible beneath the thicker passages.
“One Man Army” introduces that approach with a clipped guitar figure and a vocal that refuses to sit comfortably on the beat. Maida bunches words together, stretches syllables, and jumps into his upper register as though the next phrase cannot wait. Taggart fills the spaces around him without losing the song’s pulse. The lyric’s push for individuality comes through in a performance that sounds argumentative, even when nobody else is speaking.
Maida’s voice can be an awkward instrument, and these songs make use of that. He lets a note turn nasal and thins out his tone as he climbs and changes register in the middle of a thought. You hear the effort. In “Happiness & the Fish,” his softer delivery makes the sharper outbursts sound especially impatient. The words move through disgust and dissatisfaction without arriving at a clear explanation of what would make things better. Singing them louder does not seem to help much.
The band keeps that frustration from becoming musically monotonous. Turner’s repeated figures leave room for Coutts and Taggart to move underneath them. A drum fill or a change in vocal phrasing can alter the character of a passage before the chords change. Lanni’s production preserves those details when the guitars get louder, so the quieter sections remain part of the song’s construction instead of just a wait for the chorus.
“Is Anybody Home?” gives the album’s concerns an everyday setting. Maida described someone isolated at home while surrounded by television, media, and the internet. The repeated guitar hook supplies a familiar point of return, while the chorus makes the title easy to call out. Its wording matters: somebody is asking whether another person is there. However catchy the song gets, that question still needs an answer.
“Thief” makes the absence of an answer harder to brush aside. The acoustic guitar and restrained opening vocal establish an intimacy that survives the arrival of the full band. As Maida climbs, the singing becomes more insistent, but he cannot bargain away the possibility of loss. The little recorded voice at the end changes the scale again. After all that amplification, an ordinary human voice is enough to stop you.
“Stealing Babies” finishes the album with guest drummer Elvin Jones contributing to an arrangement that gives the percussion unusual prominence. The looser passages invite attention beyond Maida’s vocal, with the drums becoming a reason to keep listening in their own right. Ending here gives the musicians room to explore after so many songs built around urgent questions.
So how much comfort can these songs offer? On Happiness…, enough to make an uncomfortable feeling easier to express. The complaint in “Happiness & the Fish,” the call for company in “Is Anybody Home?” and the pleading in “Thief” each get a distinct musical shape. Maida never sounds qualified to tell those people how to live. He sounds involved in their problems, especially when his voice strains or becomes impatient. That involvement gives the album its warmth, even when the words have little reassurance to offer.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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