By STACY A. PORTER

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Just when it seemed Radiohead had cornered the market for man-against-machine concept albums, Canadian alt-rockers Our Lady Peace (OLP) are hoping to capitalize on the current fascination with odd futuristic visions with their fourth album, Spiritual Machines. The band credits Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, with providing both the album's title and its inspiration. Kurzweil, known for his work in advanced speech recognition, is convinced that the line between human society and technology is becoming increasingly blurred and that computers will eventually become our companions and teachers. Weighty stuff for a band whose previous attempts at depth climaxed with the bizarre truism Happiness…Is Not A Fish that You Can Catch, the title of their 1999 release.

Formed in 1992 by frontman Raine Maida and guitarist Mike Turner while the pair were studying at the University of Toronto, OLP quickly expanded to include bassist Chris Eacrett (since replaced by Duncan Coutts) and drummer Jeremy Taggart. The post-grunge band's 1995 debut, Naveed, was met with immediate commercial and critical success north of the border, and established the band's status as the pride and joy of the Canadian alt-rock scene. OLP's 1997 effort, Clumsy, avoided the dreaded second album jinx and, in addition to its quadruple-platinum status in Canada, led to the band's breakthrough in the U.S. with the catchy, angst-ridden singles "Clumsy" and "Superman's Dead." The band's muscular, guitar-driven melodies and their reputation for solid live performances won them rave reviews, and the album was certified gold in the States less than a year after its release.

Spiritual Machines comes barely 14 months after Happiness...Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, which went largely unnoticed in the U.S. and which the band itself has labeled too complex. "We were trying to make this masterpiece where there [were] just so many different sounds happening," Maida has observed. "A lot of it was over people's heads." Somewhat paradoxically, given its status as a concept-driven album, the mission behind Machines was to keep it simple, at least musically. OLP's signature hook-laden choruses are back, but this time their lyrics are a bit more mature and thoughtful. The album's 10 tracks showcase Maida's quest not only to reconcile man with machine, but also to attain some level of spiritual realization. Kurzweil himself appears on the album, reading excerpts from his book and sounding generally ominous. Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, a longtime friend of the band, also appears on a couple of tracks, filling in for Jeremy Taggart who was injured mid-recording during a mugging incident.

Maida himself admits that the band spent much less time laboring over Machines than with past releases. "With this record," he said, "it was much more about capturing a vibe, capturing an energy, leaving it and then going back to it." Recording took place between a grueling tour schedule that included two trips through Canada, club appearances in the U.S. and Europe, and a stint at the Summersault Music Festival. At one point the band recorded two songs in three days, leaving the mixing up to Brendan O'Brien, whose previous gigs include Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Despite its conceptual pretenses and the spoken-word excerpts from Kurzweil's book, Machines is hardly a departure for Our Lady Peace. If anything, it is a return to the energy and simplicity of Naveed. Machines has already gone gold following in Canada following its 2000 release there, continuing the band's solid success in their homeland. OLP's signature style can be observed within the radio-ready tunes "Life" and "In Repair," both of which showcase Maida's raw vocals and his ability to push his voice into octaves clearly above his natural register. "Are You Sad?" departs from the album's largely solid beat structure, gently balancing verse and chorus until finally erupting into an emotionally charged crescendo.

Some of Machines' songs sound a little too familiar--"Middle of Yesterday," for instance, features a verse structure highly reminiscent of 1997's "Superman's Dead." Catchy riffs and melodies characterize "Right Behind You" and "Made to Heal," but can't help them from feeling highly formulaic and forgettable. If it weren't for Kurzweil's vocal bytes interspersed throughout the album, the songs would likely run into one another.

Overall, Spiritual Machines is a solid, safe album designed to appeal to the nearly 2 million OLP fans worldwide. Its attempt at conceptual greatness falls flat and fans are likely to wish Kurzweil's words had remained in his book, but what the album lacks in musical creativity, it makes up for in power and predictability. And sometimes that's all you need.

Spiritual Machines

Our Lady Peace

Sony