Despite the fact that Raine Maida still maintains the dubious honor of having performed the most dangerous act on stage that I've ever witnessed, I'd be lying if I said he didn't fall off my radar a bit over the past few years. In fact, before the recent rumblings about his post-OLP solo work, the last I think I heard of the guy was when he was doing production work for one of Avril Lavigne's records.

Let's back up a bit... about that dangerous stage act thing. Raine and his band Our Lady Peace were playing The Palladium in Worcester, MA, and some friends and I had trekked out there from Providence, RI for the show. The Palladium is one of these old-opera-house-type theaters... perhaps you've been some place similar. It's in complete disrepair, but it has a grand entryway and was clearly a very nice place to have a night out many years ago. Rock shows always feel a bit more dramatic to me in settings such as The Palladium. Anyway, because of what it used to be, the theater has these elevated luxury box seats to the right and left of the stage where the rich folks used to sit. And during "One Man Army," Raine (who had remained mostly motionless, almost as though his mic stand was the only thing holding him upright until this point) decided to climb onto a speaker stack, and up, onto the box stage right. And then, during the lines "I remember fallllinggg," he did what must've been a 15 foot backwards trust fall into the crowd. The band played on, but from where I stood it felt like an eternity before Raine (and the people in the impact zone) stood back up. To this day I can't believe nobody died.

A lot's changed for Mr. Maida since then. He grew a beard, ditched the electric guitars, and clearly, from the sound of his solo effort, has been listening to a bit of hip hop. But in some ways, he's still the same old Raine: he hasn't lost his knack for writing lyrics and hooks, and he maintains the unique vocal style that drew so many into his previous work with Our Lady Peace. Ranging from slow-burning whispered laments to wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat panic-songs, the tracks on

, are too diverse to lump together into a genre, but each was produced entirely with acoustic instruments if that helps. If you liked Our Lady Peace, you owe this a listen.

Check out this video for my favorite track, Sex Love and Honey (

), and then a few more tracks below it.

More highlights:
Yellow Brick Road (

)
Rat Race ()
Careful What You Wish For ()