"Today I got to thinking the world's in a strange way. Feels like I'm in a 7-11 when a robbery takes place. Do I hide behind the counter with my hands covering my face? Or do I dive for the gunman before he makes his break? Does a .45 go off? Do the bullets ricochet? This is not some random nightmare. See for me, well this is everyday."
-- Raine Maida, "The Snake and the Crown"

In a day and age where bands and artists need to conform to the radio friendly confines of pop-rock like never before, it’s almost impossible to strike out on your own to make an album that doesn’t adhere to convention. After churning out alternative rock hits since the early ‘90s as the lead singer of Our Lady Peace, Raine Maida stepped away from the band’s legacy to record The Hunters Lullaby, the first solo album of his long and successful career that hits the U.S. market on Tuesday, August 26. Luckily for Maida, the success and longevity of Our Lady Peace has afforded him the opportunity to experiment with various musical styles on a journey to find his own voice as a solo artist. The final result of The Hunters Lullaby is an album that fits perfectly in line with Raine Maida’s activist nature, as a songwriter passionate about the world around him and his desire to make a difference through his music and socio-political actions away from the stage.

A departure from the sound and formula of Our Lady peace, The Hunters Lullaby is an album that strips away the edgy alt-rock trappings and gives way to a simpler approach to music and storytelling in the same way artists like Leonard Cohen and James Taylor expressed their inner convictions while also tapping into the revival of the poetic spoken word movement, rejuvenated by such powerful contemporary expressionists as Sage Francis, Saul Williams and Jared Paul. Maida takes an organic approach to the arrangements, experimenting with a changeable recipe beats, piano and acoustic guitar as reflected on such songs as Careful What You Wish For and Sex, Love and Honey.

Although The Hunters Lullaby does have one direct radio friendly song in the more mainstream Yellow Brick Road, possibly proving you can’t truly break free, Maida’s maturity as a songwriter counters the formula in songs like Rat Race, giving fans a glimpse into how he sees himself fitting into an increasingly time-deprived technological age via such lyrics as, "My eyes are hollow. My Bones are begging for sleep. I won’t make it through tomorrow. I’m useless with these wooden wings." Despite his successes over the years, Maida clearly admits that he too suffers from what many of us go through on a daily basis, as time becomes even more of a valuable commodity.

Given how the music world has been transformed by shows like American Idol, with a focus on the almighty hit single instead of full albums, The Hunters Lullaby is bold and ballsy step for Maida to take. Throughout the process, Maida eventually discovered more of what he wanted the album to represent, which was beyond the mainstream trappings of what an album should be, as dictated by the industry. The Hunters Lullaby is less about a hit single and more about his message and getting to know Raine Maida on an intimate level. It’s an album that ties in nicely with Maida’s charitable War Child project with wife Chantal Kreviazuk, a non-profit organization raises money for children affected by global conflict.

In our recent interview with the OLP front man, Maida revealed to us that his vision for what he wanted The Hunters Lullaby to be also extended to the idea of making a video, "We talked about doing a video and I have a couple of friends who are directors, one in Toronto, one in L.A., and a couple of other people in Europe that I really like, and we talked about 'Yellow Brick Road' and maybe that or 'Sex Love and Honey' to just make some sort of video for. So I sent it to these people and I got back some e-mails and what they thought of the song and what they envisioned. And I just started to get that feeling in my stomach. I thought, 'Oh God, this is turning into a music video.' So I called Nettwerk and I called my manager, Dan, and I said, 'You know what? I’m just not into this. This is not what this record is about and I don’t want to go down that path. So I think I’ll forego a video.'"

As an alternate way to promote the album, Maida took to the streets of Toronto with only a guitar in hand to help raise money for War Child through The Hunters Lullaby. As a result, Maida ended up raising $22,000 dollars in one day, which is the underlying spirit of The Hunters Lullaby.

In a day and age where bands and artists need to conform to the radio friendly confines of pop-rock like never before, it’s refreshing to listen to an album that takes you back to the days when experimentation was embraced and not bound by pop-rock formula. In many ways, The Hunters Lullaby is Raine Maida’s coming out party as a mature middle aged songwriter, which benefits greatly from years of making music, touring and the wisdom gained by years of experience. Although shadowy and unpredictable in nature, The Hunters Lullaby is one of the strongest, most intellectually sound albums of the year. The only drawback to the album on the surface, which is actually the The Hunters Lullaby’s greatest strength, is the fact that fans conditioned by radio friendly airplay might not get it since it doesn’t sound like everything else. There aren’t many bands or singers today who will be afforded the luxury of making their first solo album almost 15 years after bursting onto the world stage. Most will be long gone and forgotten by that time, but we’ll still know Raine Maida, thanks even more to The Hunters Lullaby.