After winning over thousands of fans with four albums, touring Canada extensively and having their songs played over and over again on the radio, Toronto-bred rockers Our Lady Peace felt a numbness they could only escape by fleeing the country.
"We decided to consciously take a break. If you're up here and playing every week people aren't going to care," drummer Jeremy Taggart said during an interview.
Singer Raine Maida added that the band felt its songs were being overplayed on the radio and television.
"It sucks to hear an Our Lady Peace song on the radio every 40 minutes. It's not supposed to be like that," he said.
So last winter the quartet fled to the Maui home of legendary Canadian-born producer Bob Rock, who has worked with David Lee Roth, Metallica and Aerosmith, to take a break and find a new focus.
The band originally set out to produce a live record but Rock had time to spare -- Metallica was to work with him but singer James Hetfield checked into a rehab centre for alcohol and substance abuse -- so Our Lady Peace seized the opportunity.
Taggart said he knew things were going well after Maida returned home one night (the four lived together during the 10 weeks of recording) from a session with Rock feeling angry and frustrated.
"That's the environment you have to be in to get the best out," Taggart said, adding that he felt the same way at times. "Every musician or singer needs somebody to kick them in the butt."
"This is the first time I've really been challenged," Maida admitted. The singer, who's married to Winnipeg singer Chantal Kreviazuk, said he felt anxious and nervous standing in front of the microphone in Maui, a feeling that had been lost to him in recent years.
Another change came when guitarist Mike Turner, who founded the band more than a decade ago after placing an ad for musicians in a local newspaper, left the group. He was replaced with Detroit's Steve Mazur after a two-month public search during which the band received thousands of demo tapes, videos and CDs from all over the world, including Australia and Japan.
"The last two records we've been yearning for a guitar player that can really stand up and have strong voice and Mike just wasn't that kind of guitar player," Maida explained.
"He was going in a different direction than what the three of us needed."
With a new guitarist, the band -- rounded out with bassist Duncan Coutts -- felt like a cohesive unit, Maida said.
"It just felt incredible. It felt like a new band, totally fresh."
The 10 tracks on Gravity, the band's fifth album, are stripped of the heavy layers of sound found on 2000's Spiritual Machine, the band's last album. Simplified beats, lyrics and guitar hooks define Gravity, which debuted in second place on the Canadian sales charts and at No. 9 in the U.S.
"This record is very grounded," Maida said. "What are the issues we have to deal with in the present? Because really, that's the only thing that's relevant."
And after four albums the band decided it was time to finally show their faces on a CD cover. They had previously used photographs of Sol Fox, an elderly Canadian actor.
"We wanted to represent that it is something different for us and it finally feels cohesive with Steve," Maida said.
The band will flee Canada again this summer as they criss-cross the United States performing. They'll return to Canada in the fall for a tour.