Our Lady Peace are a great band from Canada that are mostly remembered in the U.S. for their hit “Superman’s Dead” from their 1997 sophomore album Clumsy. On the power of “Superman’s Dead” and the title track, Clumsy went platinum in the U.S. It still remains their most known album but in my opinion it’s their second or third best. Our Lady Peace made another splash in the States in 2002 with “Somewhere Out There” and “Innocent” from their fifth album Gravity. It was a more straightforward modern rock record and fit well with the style of music that was popular at the time. They released their sixth studio album titled Healthy In Paranoid Times in 2005 and in 2006 they released A Decade, a collection of their greatest hits. It kills me that a horrendously crappy band such as Nickelback (who are also Canadian) can be such a hit here in the U.S. when Our Lady Peace make great music and receive little recognition. Maybe OLP isn’t marketed as well here, I don’t know. Even so, the band’s fourth album, and my favorite, Spiritual Machines was their least commercially successful. It’s pretty much a concept album inspired by the book The Age of Spiritual Machines by scientist/inventor Ray Kurzweil. The book deals with subjects such as artificial intelligence and how technology will impact humanity in the coming generations. It’s pretty deep stuff and I can see why some people might be turned off by the subject matter of the record, but I think it makes for OLP’s most compelling album ever. This is the last OLP record to feature Mike Turner as lead guitarist and you can tell the difference in the two albums since this one. The ten excellent songs on Spiritual Machines are accompanied by five short spoken word segments which are actually Kurzweil reading excerpts from the book. These cryptic snippets do a great job of connecting the dots on the album and bringing the whole theme together. I’ve attached the track “R.K. 2029” to the beginning of “In Repair” so you can get the full effect of how it flows on the album. Enjoy.
One new song everyday until I get tired of doing it again. Click on the artist's name to get more information about them. Click on the album art for purchase information. Click on the play button to listen for yourself. Enjoy.
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