A Fish Is Not Something You Can Catch Album
My grandmother is in the throes of dimentia. It's a horrifying thing to watch her mind spiral down into a lightless abyss. Even worse is that I can see that she knows something is happening in her head, that it's not working right and she can't stop it from misfiring, can't right the horrorible lack of direction in her brain. When I look into her eyes there is barely a flicker of recoginition, and just as quickly as that flicker appears, it's gone. "I can't see that thief that lives inside of your head..." kept running through my mind the other night while I was visiting her in the hospital. I couldn't place it at first, then I figured it out. How could I have not known? I realized it to be "Thief" from Our Lady Peace's third album, 'Happiness...Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch', a relatively big album from a pretty formative Canadian band for many people my age. The song could only have been written by someone confronted with this very thing, a dying friend or relative in the final stretch of life and the need to find reason and meaning in your own life as you are forced to watch the end of theirs. It remains an incredibly poignant portrait of mental illness from the view of someone on the outside, watching helplessly. I couldn't remember the rest of the album well and wondered if it could hold half the weight of this single, so I decided to dig it up when I got home that night. There was something a bit different in the way Our Lady Peace attacked the modern rock landscape, and the key lay in frontman Raine Madia's lyrics. From the formative days in the band there was something Rush-like about the words that lay ontop of all those big rock guitars and drums. Maida sang about the theory of Starseeds, watching friends drown and comparing reading Dylan and the Bible. There was always that feeling of searching for one's place in a ludicrously large, detached world, seeped through the pores of all Our Lady Peace's strongest early work. And underneath all this spiritual nomadism was an ever-swelling current of sadness and loneliness. 'Happiness...' is the work of someone lost in all world with too many answers but no real solutions, watching people held dear crumble and fall away, seeking desperately to find solace before the chance to do so is pulled out from under. The opening track 'One Man Amry' immedeatly establishes the often solitary and necessarily confusing fight against the helplessness and isolation. Though, with its large rock sound, and Maida's strongly independent lyrics there is a strong sense of defiance, a feeling that he's ready to shed the confines of the isolation, the symptom of living our lives in a manmade hellscape. "Let the bare feet be the last sound that they hear..." is the last piece of advice we hear before we head out on the dark road of confronting mortality and trying to find Earthly fulfillment before the end. The title track is, fittingly, the manifesto for the album. It is a statement born of disgust at the seemingly endless stagnation of the modern human condition. The overwhelming feeling that everyone is being overtaken by "laziness, that pins you down," and forces you to "get on your knees". All the while feeling empathy for the people consumed by the same feeings of uselessness and shame that he is. And from there on, there really is no let up here. The tones are dark and ominous. The whole record is consumed by the same strangling feeling, the sense of being chased in endless circles by impending capture and imprisonment by the invisible forces of mortality. Sonically, the music is rightfully anchored by Taggart's skillful drumming. His ability to play in the pocket but never to fade into the background is astounding, his rhythms always keeping the rather standard alt-rock interesting. The guitars are there in full force but there is both a gentless in regards to and a detachment from the subject matter, often sounding as disjointed and confused as the lyrics suggest the singer to be. As with most of OLP's catalogue, Maida's voice tends to get away from him from time to time, the high-pitched wailings piercing the eardrums of the listener with overwhelming annoyance, but here, with a couple unfortunate exceptions (The otherwise gorgeous "Waited" and the completely ludicrous vocal peaking of 'One Many Army'), that tendancy is mercifully held in check. 'Happiness...Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch' is a deceptively simple-sounding and incredibly mature radio-rock album that is overgrown with loneliness, desire and heartbreak. It's a lot more heavy-handing and serious than I remember it being and though I'm glad to have revisited it, I wish it was a less awful reason that made me pick it back up off the shelf.
Published
Happiness... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch is best described as the first mature Our Lady Peace album. It completes the transition from the post-grunge of the band's first two albums to the more melodic alternative rock that would characterize the rest of their career, with a significantly glossier production and a "fuller" instrumental style. Raine Maida's slightly whiny vocals are still the band's most distinctive feature, but his falsetto-laden theatrics have been toned down in favor of a smoother and more hook-centric delivery. The effect of these shifts on the band's songwriting proves to be rather negligible. It's extremely easy to recognize an Our Lady Peace track when you hear one, and I suspect that anybody who enjoyed Naveed and Clumsy will also enjoy this record. Sadly, this familiarity also prompts my primary criticism about Happiness...: the band brings absolutely nothing new to the table on this record. There are a number of really nice tracks, but absolutely nothing that stands out in the context of their entire discography. This is especially true of the vocal melodies. Maida is a unique singer, but his delivery quickly grows predictable and that predictability is especially bothersome on this release. The result is a record that I rarely think of putting on. Amongst the band's first four releases, this is easily their most "nondescript". So if you're a already a fan of melodic post-grunge, you'll undoubtedly be moderately pleased by Happiness..., but I can't imagine recommending this album to someone who hasn't already familiarized themselves with Clumsy and Spiritual Machines. A decent 3.0 stars for a nice yet utterly inconsequential record. I don't have a whole lot to say about specific tracks off Happiness.... As alluded above, the record is consistently decent yet lacking in standouts. The album's first two singles ("One Man Army", "Is Anybody Home") are nice introductions to the band's harder-rocking and ballad-esque sides, respectively. I'd still hesitate to call either track a career highlights. I'm even less enthusiastic about the final single "Thief", whose radio-friendly power-ballad vibe is a bit too sappy for my tastes. Interestingly, the record does manage to include with is probably my favorite non-single from the band's entire career in "Potato Girl". That selection features what is arguably the quintessential vocal delivery in the Our Lady Peace catalogue: if you have any love for Maida's style, you should drool over that track's winding build-up. "Blister" is another worthy deep cut that is at least as memorable as the album's singles. Unfortunately, many of the remaining selections qualify as filler. In particular, the band continues their frustrating tradition of closing out their albums with a string of overwhelming generic rockers. At least their aren't any obvious missteps of the sort that would begin appearing on Gravity, and as a whole Happiness... should be lauded as the band's most consistent effort up to this point. 5.5/10
Published
Back in the mid-'90s i heard a few songs from Our Lady Peace that were quite good. "Starseed", "The Birdman", and especially "Superman's Dead"... very nice. Nothing to make me rush out and buy their albums, but enough that i made note of these guys. Then came "One Man Army". Wow. Excellent song that i dug from day one, and off i went to track down the parent album, Happiness... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch. And once i found it, i loved it. The 'title' track, "Happiness & The Fish", is a little weak, but there are some excellent tunes here - "Potato Girl", "Blister", "Waited", "Thief"... and my personal favorites, "Annie" and "Lying Awake".
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Raine Maida - vocals
Jeremy Taggart - drums
Mike Turner - guitar
Duncan Coutts - bass
Produced by Arnold Lanni
1999 Columbia Records (CK 63707)
highs - Potato Girl, Blister, Waited, Thief, Lying Awake, Annie
lows - Happiness & The Fish
like this, go for: come back to me on this
acquired some time at some place
originally reviewed 21 June 2005
Published
I can't say for sure, but I doubt there are many fence sitters when it comes to Our Lady Peace. Having a singer like Raine Maida will do that to any band, especially on their three album run from Clumsy to Spiritual Machines, where he yelps, whines, croons, and screams with a passion and desperation such as if any particular song may be the last song he'll ever sing. I'm of the camp that not only doesn't get annoyed by his voice, but really loves the emotion and range he puts into each performance. He turns songs, which with any other band would be merely average at best, into soaring, fun anthems. I'm listening to this album as I write this review, and it never struck me as much as it does now exactly how unspectacular the backing instrumentation is. It's decent, but is there mainly to serve as a base for Maida more than anything else. The highlights on this album are the two singles, "One Man Army" and "Is Anybody Home?", and the filler songs are "Annie" and "Consequence of Laughing." Everything else is worthy of being here. And watch out, singing along to these songs can get addicting. It's a great "driving alone and singing along" rock album. Yeah, I'll admit it - I like to belt me out some mean falsetto every once and a while. And I can't write this review and not include one of my favorite rock lyrics. "Talking is just masturbating without the mess." My heck, how true that is. I give this album 3 stars only because 3.5 stars would pretty much the ceiling for a by-the-numbers alt rock album such as this. There's only so much I'll be able to get from it. It's like in gymnastics where the level of difficulty is low, so the highest the balance beam performance can earn is a 9.2 out of 10. Happiness isn't anything groundbreaking whatsoever, but it does a really good job doing what it attempts to do.
From "Happiness & the Fish"
Published
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A Fish Is Not Something You Can Catch Album
Source: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/our-lady-peace/happiness-is-not-a-fish-that-you-can-catch/