Our Lady Peace has written its first concept album with Spiritual Machines,
in stores Tuesday.
And front man Raine Maida doesn’t think there’s anything pretentious
about that given the involvement of the band’s inspiration—Ray Kurtzweil,
the author of The Age Of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human
Intelligence.
OLP, specifically guitarist Mike Turner, made contact with Kurtzweil
via e-mail and he wound up reciting a series of five quotes from his book
for OLP’s record.
“It was really inspiring to have a guy of that stature be so personable,
he was just a human being,” says Maida, on the phone recently from Winnipeg
as the band’s eight-city club tour makes its way across Canada.
“And it’s funny. It goes against all the stuff he’s been
talking about. At times, he’s basically saying that man is a part
of evolution, and not the last part. We’re just one chapter.
And it’s going to evolve to the point where man is really unimportant
and fallible and can’t compete with the computer. So it does get
really dark to me and it kind of got to the point where I’m like… ‘there’s
got to be more than this.’”
Spiritual Machines also features Maida co-producing for the first time
as well as a guest appearance by Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron.
Cameron filled in for an ailing Jeremy Taggart, whose knee was damaged
when he was mugged in Toronto while walking his dog late at night.
“He wasn’t down and out in the hospital but where they got him,
he couldn’t lift his knee up to drum, so it was kind of a drag,” says
Maida, who adds the band was on a deadline to take the album to Atlanta
for mixing by Brendan O’Brien.
“Thank God, Thursday night Pearl Jam was in town and so Matt Cameron,
on Friday, comes in. Jeremy gives him a call and Matt comes in and
kind of helps out a friend.”
To say that OLP have had a productive year is a bit of an understatement.
After touring Canada, the U.S. and Europe to promote their 1999 release,
Happiness… Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, they also staged their semi-regular
summer festival Summersault featuring Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters and
A Perfect Circle, among others. The group didn’t think they’d
have a new album until next spring.
“It was so organic,” says Maida. “It was so scattered.
It just made it really exciting. It kept things really spontaneous.”
To promote the new album, the Toronto rockers are playing a series
of small clubs across Canada.
“It’s nice to be in a position where you can play both small places
and big places,” says bassist Duncan Coutts
“We really wanted to get back to our roots, without that sounding
pretentious or anything. We tried to make an honest record, so we’re
starting off small and perhaps more humble.”
Coutts admits he has yet to finish Kurtzweil’s book, but he’s intrigued
by the premise. “It’s scary. I’m about 60 pages in… and if
it’s true what Kurtzweil is saying, it’s a wonderful and scary question.
Where does man leave off and machine begin in the future? Was Blade
Runner not just fictional?”
Maida’s wife, Chantal Kreviazuk, also seems audiable on the recors,
but Coutts won’t confirm or deny her involvement.