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Curve (album)

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Curve
Studio album by
Our Lady Peace
ReleasedApril 3, 2012
RecordedJanuary 2010–February 2012
StudioLos Angeles, California, US
Genre
Length41:39
LabelWarner Music
ProducerJason Lader
Raine Maida
Our Lady Peace chronology
Burn Burn
(2009) 		Curve
(2012) 		Somethingness
(2018)
Singles from Curve
  1. "Heavyweight"
    Released: December 20, 2011
  2. "As Fast As You Can"
    Released: April 2012[1]

Curve is the eighth studio album by Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace (OLP), released on April 3, 2012.[2] The album was recorded from 2010 through 2012 at vocalist Raine Maida's home recording studio. Curve's first single, "Heavyweight", was released on December 20, 2011. The music from Curve has been touted by lead singer Maida as being "more experimental and ambitious" than the band's 2000 concept album Spiritual Machines.[3] The album's cover features Canadian heavyweight boxer George Chuvalo, whose vocal excerpts are featured in the album's tenth and final track "Mettle".[4]

The album debuted at No.9 on the Canadian Albums Chart.[5] This is the last album to feature the Gravity-era lineup, with drummer Jeremy Taggart leaving the band in June 2014. The time between Curve's release and the band's 2018 album Somethingness marked the longest gap between Our Lady Peace studio albums to date, at nearly 6 years.

Development

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The band began recording Curve about six months after the release of their seventh studio album, Burn Burn.[6] As with Burn Burn, the album was recorded at Raine Maida's studio in Los Angeles and is not attached to a major record label. Fans were provided with unprecedented live footage of the band recording the album via Ustream throughout early to mid-2011. Band members also provided live updates on the progress of the album, including song titles and lyrics, via Twitter and Facebook.

Artistic direction

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Curve's artistic direction was inspired by the band's 2010 Clumsy and Spiritual Machines tour,[7] as well as by constructive criticism from a friend of the band's, Jason Lader, who later became producer of the album. When Lader was shown some early working material from the album, he criticized it, saying "why don't you make a record that you would listen to?".[8] This prompted the band to scrap all of the material they'd written and recorded up to that point, and to start over fresh.

The band has stated that they pushed the creative boundaries as much as possible with Curve's music. In a late 2011 interview, lead singer Maida was quoted as saying, "when we look back at what we respect about what we've done, whether it's things from Naveed or things from Spiritual Machines, it's tapping into those feelings and trying to find that place again where we exist as artists, and the record really goes deep into those spaces, so it's getting back to what I think the best parts of this band are." He added, "I think people are gonna be pretty surprised where this record goes".[8]

Critical reception

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Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic49/100[9]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[10]
Consequence of SoundD−[11]
Pop Matters[12]
Now[13]
AbsolutePunk[14]
Melodic[15]

At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 49 (based on four reviews) indicating the reception of the album has been 'mixed'.[9]

Track listing

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The official track list was revealed through Curve's entry on Amazon.com in March 2012.[16]

No.TitleNotesLength
1."Allowance" 3:34
2."Fire in the Hen House" 3:29
3."Heavyweight"First single4:15
4."Window Seat" 4:16
5."As Fast As You Can"Second single[1]3:11
6."If This Is It" 4:50
7."Will Someday Change" 3:43
8."Find Our Way" 4:49
9."Rabbits" 5:33
10."Mettle"Features vocal excerpts from boxer George Chuvalo3:52

References

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  1. ^ a b Our Lady Peace's Heavyweight video packs a wallop – Zoiks! Online. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
  2. ^ Our Lady Peace still rewriting their history Archived April 10, 2012, at Archive-It – National Post. Retrieved April 3, 2012.
  3. ^ Our Lady Peace bringing new tunes and renewed energy to Tecumseh's Cornfest – Windsorite.ca. July 18, 2011. Retrieved January 19, 2012.
  4. ^ TRT Interviews: Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace Archived February 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine – The Round Table. February 6, 2012. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  5. ^ "Canadian Albums - Week of April 21, 2012". Billboard. Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  6. ^ Our Lady Peace Preparing New Album[usurped] – ChartAttack. December 9, 2009. Retrieved January 19, 2012.
  7. ^ "The complete Q&A: Raine Maida". Archived from the original on April 7, 2010. Retrieved January 19, 2012. – Montreal Gazette. Canwest Publishing, Inc. 2010. Archived version retrieved December 15, 2011.
  8. ^ a b Raine says new Our Lady Peace album “sets up the next ten years for us” – Exploremusic.com. December 26, 2011. Retrieved January 19, 2012.
  9. ^ a b "Curve - Our Lady Peace". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  10. ^ Monger, James Christopher. "Curve – Our Lady Peace". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  11. ^ Staskel, Ryan (April 9, 2012). "Album Review: Our Lady Peace – Curve". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  12. ^ McGuire, Colin (April 18, 2012). "Our Lady Peace: Curve". Pop Matters. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  13. ^ Boles, Benjamin (April 3, 2012). "Our Lady Peace - Curve". Now. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  14. ^ Gardner, Jason (April 17, 2012). "Our Lady Peace - Curve". AbsolutePunk. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  15. ^ Wippsson, Johan (April 3, 2012). "Our Lady Peace - Curve". Melodic. Archived from the original on May 2, 2012. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  16. ^ Curve: Amazon.ca: Music – Amazon. Retrieved March 5, 2012.
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