Scott Roos
Special to the Herald
There is something pretty special about watching a married couple who have been together long enough to know exactly how to push each other’s buttons and exactly when to jump in with the perfect punchline. That was part of the charm of Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk’s concert at the EA Rawlinson Centre on Sept. 24.
The sell-out crowd got plenty of music, of course, but they also got a generous helping of the couple’s personalities, their stories and the kind of easy banter that comes from years of knowing each other very, very well.
The stage itself was suitably intimate. Soft lighting and a few strategically placed stand-up lamps were about it. Maida had an acoustic guitar, Kreviazuk spent much of the evening at the piano, and they were joined by a drummer and bass player. It was simple, but it worked.
Much of the evening featured songs from their Moon vs Sun project, including “I’m Going to Break Your Heart,” “I Can Change” and “Bring That Boy.” But one of the real treats was hearing the couple dip into their individual careers and put a new spin on some familiar material. Maida, of course, has spent decades fronting Our Lady Peace, and songs like “Innocent,” “Clumsy” and “Starseed” were given stripped-down, almost MTV Unplugged-style treatments. And having Kreviazuk sitting at the piano beside him made those songs sound different. Her piano playing and vocal nuances brought another layer to the OLP material, giving the songs a fresh perspective without losing what made them memorable in the first place.
It was also fun watching Maida and Kreviazuk interact throughout the night. Kreviazuk was the more talkative of the two, happily chatting with the audience and providing plenty of setup between songs. Maida, meanwhile, was more understated, delivering his humour in a dry, deadpan fashion. Maida often waited until Kreviazuk had finished making a point before adding a perfectly timed comment. It was classic married-couple banter. They were practically finishing each other’s sentences and, occasionally, you could see that one of them was wondering where the other was going with a story.
Kreviazuk also mentioned towards the beginning of the night that her voice wasn’t necessarily in top form, but she certainly didn’t let that stop her. There was a gritty, slightly strained quality to her voice at times (clearly not the norm), but she somehow made it work with the material. Rather than fighting it, she seemed to find a way to use it. An early highlight was “In This Life,” which gave her plenty of room to show off that quality.
For the encore, the crowd got to have a say in what they wanted to hear. “Feels Like Home” was one of the selections, while Kreviazuk also delivered a surprisingly cool version of OLP’s “Superman’s Dead”. The audience ate it up. And really, that seemed to be the story of the night.
So, at the end of the night, this wasn’t a concert built around elaborate staging or flashy production. It was two accomplished Canadian musicians playing a handful of songs, a few stories and enough history between them to fill the gaps. The result was warm, funny and intimate.
Maida and Kreviazuk have plenty of impressive songs between them. But on this night in Prince Albert, it was their ability to blend those musical careers, and their very obvious chemistry as a married couple, that made the evening feel like something a little more charmingly personal.
The Rawlinson crowd seemed perfectly happy to be along for the ride.
