Lifehouse: Mild thing you make my heart sing

By REBECCA BARRY

For a while it seemed the quickest way for a rock band to get a hit on mainstream radio was to stick one of their seemingly well-adjusted, white middle-class members on the turntables and bang out a serious, angsty wash of guitars, vinyl scratches and gripes.

While nu metallers Papa Roach and Linkin Park still get hits this way, a new breed of rock musicians has proved in the past couple of years that you don't have to get angry to make the charts.

Take Lifehouse. In 2000, their first single, the romantic yet grungy Hanging By A Moment, racked up more radio airplay in America than any other song, triggering the double-platinum success of their debut album, No Name Face (15,000 copies sold in New Zealand).

Lifehouse quickly established themselves alongside Creed and Nickelback, whose lyrical themes are morally uplifting rather than anti-establishment.

Still, as Lifehouse frontman Jason Wade will - politely - tell you, he has his share of personal demons to deal with. The band's new, second album, Stanley Climbfall, is about coming to grips with his past, a bizarre childhood spent in a number of obscure locations with his Christian missionary parents, who later divorced.

"It takes some really hard situations to become the person you're going to become," Wade reflects on the line from Los Angeles, sounding more like a mellow-voiced counsellor than a gravelly rockstar. "We were a really tight family and it all fell apart when I was 12. Then my dad remarried and all of a sudden I had a stepbrother and a stepsister and it just seemed like we were doing the whole thing backwards. It can stick with you your whole life unless you deal with it, and this [album] is just my way of dealing with it."

Similarly, Wade's positive spin on difficult life experiences is applied to the two songs he wrote in response to September 11 - Take Me Away and The Sky is Falling - which sound resolutely upbeat despite their grave themes. "Positive music is doing a lot better," he says.

"Some of the really heavy rock stuff isn't quite as popular. You don't have to scream or put heavy guitars into it to make it a passionate rock song; when you strip it down it can be just as powerful. I think September 11 put into perspective what people choose to listen to."

Whether or not they're choosing soft rock, Wade isn't sure. Surprisingly, it's a term he doesn't mind his music being branded with, although one tag he can't seem to shake is the endless comparisons to Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder.

It's no surprise, then, that Lifehouse's music resonates with the hallmarks of early-90s Seattle grunge, minus the distortion and the post-punk attitudes.

"I'm actually more inspired and influenced by Kurt Cobain," Wade explains, "as well as some 70s bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I'm not trying to sound like anybody, but when I open my mouth, that's what comes out. That's how I've sung ever since I learned to sing."

It's been about four years since Wade, bass player Sergio Andrade and drummer Rick Woolstenhulme played their first show of what became a regular Friday night gig. Not at their local bar, mind you, but at the school of the Malibu Vineyard Church, where they would lead an increasingly large group of fans in the church service.

Wade openly acknowledges that he and his bandmates are Christians - they just don't refer to themselves as a Christian band.

"I think people can accept what we do because we're not trying to preach at anybody." It's something he's sensitive to, having admitted in a Rolling Stone interview about two years ago that he often felt disheartened by the Christian church after seeing the way certain people treated his divorced father.

Now, at 22, having swapped the church hall for rock stadiums, Wade is in a good head-space.

"A lot of good stuff has happened in the past couple of years. It's like having a dream fulfilled when your music takes off and all of a sudden you're accepted. I'm really excited."

He may not have anything to complain about these days, but for Lifehouse happiness is a virtue.

* Lifehouse play the Rock 101 concert with the Goo Goo Dolls, Default, Elemeno P, and A Simple Plan at the St James, Sunday, October 13.