Our Lady Peace History
In the months between the release of Happiness... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, Our Lady Peace's third album and the group's new disc, "Spiritual Machines," OLP has been one busy band. The group completed two full national tours of Canada as well as extensive runs of Europe and the U.S., including their critically-acclaimed "Scaled" dates and a slot at Woodstock 1999. Numerous national television appearances were scheduled in between web chats, side projects and a little extracurricular reading. In fact, the array of events and experiences that were packed into this period go a long way in explaining the creative spark that fuels Our Lady Peace's Spiritual Machines.
The album title is taken from Ray Kurzweil's book, "The Age of Spiritual Machines - When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence." Our Lady Peace guitarist Mike Turner stumbled upon the tome and quickly became inspired by Kurzweil's words. (Author Ray Kurzweil is also the inventor of some of today's most compelling technology, including the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the Kurzweil synthesizer and advanced speech recognition.) "The Age of Spiritual Machines" describes a world where the line between humanity and technology fades, and the computer ultimately becomes our teacher, companion and lover in a blur of man meets machine.
The energy Mike derived from reading Ray Kurzweil's work led to vocalist and lyricist Raine Maida's eventual investigation of the book. Since then, both drummer Jeremy Taggart and bassist Duncan Coutts have been absorbing Kurzweil's ideas through Mike and Raine's fascination with the book. Kurzweil's impact is evident in the title of Our Lady Peace's new album, but also in the band's work itself.
"Lyrically, this album is about finding the spirituality within ourselves," explains Raine. The lyrics that Raine brought to this new record draw upon many of Ray Kurzweil's theories. The ideas found on Spiritual Machines hint at the blurring distinction between humans and computers. "The lyrics for the track 'In Repair' focus upon how people tend to treat each other as machines in our day-to-day life. We really need to take stock and focus our energy towards those in our lives that matter. Sometimes it seems as if we need an oil change," concedes Raine.
Mike explains his initial interest in Kurzweil "set the mental framework among us as a band for the recording of this album." To even further this Kurzweil connection, the band contacted Ray Kurzweil and a correspondence developed. The band found the author to be "wonderfully approachable." In fact, Kurzweil even appears on the album to contribute some of his own readings.
Our Lady Peace were absorbing Ray Kurzweil's words while they crossed Canada on their national arena tour last fall. "It was during this tour that I began to write some new songs," explains Raine. "Once we returned home from this tour we headed directly into the studio and began to record what became Spiritual Machines."
This recording session was interrupted when the band kicked off Our Lady Peace's Summersault, with The Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, finger eleven, A Perfect Circle and others. Summersault was conceived and organized by the band's four members in 1998 and rolled out across Canada for a second time this past summer. "Being surrounded every day by some of our favorite artists and witnessing some incredible performances helped further the creative process towards the completion of Spiritual Machines," reflects Raine. "Summersault--mixed with Kurzweil's thoughts--really inspired us to get back into the studio and finish this album," he explains.
After Summersault the band returned to the studio with producer Arnold Lanni in Toronto. Raine stepped in as co-producer on this album, which marks a new creative step for Our Lady Peace. The band also enlisted Brendan O'Brien (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam) to mix this album. "It was an amazing experience working with Brendan, someone who immediately understood what we were trying to do and was able to capture exactly how we heard this album," says Raine.
On this record a strange twist of fate and an unfortunate mugging incident made it difficult for Our Lady Peace drummer Jeremy to complete the recording sessions for Spiritual Machines. "Basically, I was in a position where I couldn't play. We still had two more songs that were left to record and I definitely wasn't going to be able to play," explains Jeremy. Fortunately, long-time friend Matt Cameron, drummer of Pearl Jam, happened to be passing through Toronto during that critical week of recording and volunteered to fill in on the tracks "Right Behind You (Mafia)" and "Are You Sad." Multi-instrumentalist Jamie Edwards continues his relationship with Our Lady Peace as he plays throughout this entire album.
The story of Our Lady Peace began in 1993 when the band cut three demos (including their smash hit "Starseed") with producer Arnold Lanni in his Toronto studio. Those demos quickly led to a deal with Sony Music. The band's first album, Naveed (released on Relativity in the U.S. in 1995), generated the Top 10 Modern Rock and Active Rock hit, "Starseed." Following this release, Our Lady Peace toured incessantly, performing more than 400 shows to over half-a-million fans.
The band's second album, Clumsy, was released in 1997 and entered the Canadian sales charts at #1. The album has since gone on to sell more than 900,000 copies in Canada and some 2 million copies worldwide. Clumsy--which is rapidly approaching the RIAA platinum mark in the United States--contained four Top 10 Canadian singles: "Superman's Dead," "Clumsy," Automatic Flowers" and "4am"; both "Superman's Dead" and "Clumsy" were Top 5 Modern Rock Tracks in the U.S.
Following the release of Clumsy, Our Lady Peace spent 18 months touring, including a sold-out arena tour in Canada and headlining dates in the U.S. and Europe. In August 1998, Our Lady Peace launched Summersault, a multi-band touring festival. The initial Summersault tour featured Our Lady Peace, Garbage, Crystal Method, Sloan, Eve 6 and Fuel. Our Lady Peace also went on to win two 1998 Juno Awards and two MuchMusic Video Awards.
Happiness... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch was released in 1999 to widespread critical and popular acclaim. Like Clumsy, the album debuted at #1 in the Canadian sales charts, this time ahead of Nine Inch Nails, Chris Cornell, Tori Amos and other albums released that week. "One Man Army," the first single from HappinessÖ, continued OLP's success on stateside alternative radio and went Top 10 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks; "Is Anybody Home?" went to #20 on that chart. This album has currently surpassed triple platinum certification in Canada. Following this release, Our Lady Peace embarked on their second sold-out national arena tour, joined in celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival and re-launched their own festival tour, Summersault. This past year, Our Lady Peace performed to more than 750,000 fans in Canada alone. Our Lady Peace was honored at the 2000 MuchMusic Video Awards with two People's Choice Awards: "Favourite Canadian Group" and "Favourite Canadian Video."
Ray Kurzweil's ideas lit a creative spark within Our Lady Peace and Spiritual Machines is the sound of a band on fire. The band's passion and ideas throughout this album will take their fans through Happiness... into the future and beyond.
(Bio came from the wonderful people at OurLadyPeace.com
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