"We had a big sign up that said, 'Just Keep It Simple,'" reveals Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida of the daily reminder the Canadian rock band placed in their rehearsal hall during the making of their fourth and latest album, Spiritual Machines (released Tuesday in Canada, to be released March 13 in the U.S.).

Each of OLP's previous three albums became progressively complex. The musically adventurous 1997 effort, Clumsy, included everything from samples of a machine punching a hole through metal to outdoor carnival and shopping mall noises, but without drowning the melody. The last album, 1999's Happiness . . . Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, was more challenging to a fault, Maida reflects.

"With Happiness . . ., we were trying to make this masterpiece where there was just so many different sounds happening a lot of it was over people's heads. There was just too much information," he determines. "Even when I listen back to it, there's way too much that overshadows the songs on some tracks."

For Spiritual Machines, Maida and his bandmates were inspired by the writings of Ray Kurzweil, a philosophical visionary whose book The Age Of Spiritual Machines -- When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, logically and systematically predicts the takeover of mankind by computers. Maida doesn't believe that the human race is doomed and tackles as much in half the songs on Spiritual Machines. "The best thing that I could find in the book in terms of motivating me to write lyrics and finding something inspiring was that he didn't touch on the soul or the spirit," notes Maida, who explores both the soul and the cyber equally on the new album.

With such lyrical complexity on Spiritual Machines, Maida, guitarist Mike Turner, drummer Jeremy Taggart and bassist Duncan Coutts, as the sign in their Toronto rehearsal space indicates, consciously set out to keep the music and recording process simple and spontaneous. "I think we've always been, probably to a fault, laboring over every note," Maida says of the band's past work ethic. "We spent so much time on the little details and I think, with this record, it was much more about capturing a vibe, capturing an energy, leaving it and then going back to it. Does it still have that energy? If it does, great, it's going to make the record."

Out of all the OLP albums, he believes 1995's debut, Naveed, comes the closest to paralleling Spiritual Machines. "I hear a lot of the same energy that I hear on this record. I think musically it's a little more advanced. Naveed was pretty basic, but there a real spontaneity."

To maintain that energy on the new album, the band hammered out the songs between touring. With long-time producer Arnold Lanni at the helm, OLP recorded six songs in three weeks before heading out on the road with the Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, A Perfect Circle and management-mates finger eleven, on the Canadian music festival they founded called Summersault.

Testing out "Life" and "Everyone's A Junkie" live, the band returned home pumped with the ferocity that only stage and audience can provide and immediately whipped off the rest of the album, this time with Maida taking a co-production role.

The flow of recording was almost interrupted when Taggart was assaulted by some teenage thugs, leaving him unable to play kick drum proficiently on "Right Behind You (Mafia)" and "Are You Sad." With just a few days left in the studio, before mixing was scheduled to begin with Brendan O'Brien (Soundgarden , Pearl Jam), the band decided to bring in their friend and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron to fill in.

"[Taggart]'s fine. It was just weird timing," says Maida of the unfortunate incident. "If we had had another two days, he would have been able to do it, but unfortunately we didn't. So Matt came in, did the drum tracks on a Friday or Saturday, and then I was going to Atlanta to mix the thing [with O'Brien] on Wednesday. So we recorded two songs in three days basically, which is amazing. That was just the kind of the attitude we took for the whole record."

KAREN BLISS
(December 12, 2000)