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Thoughts on "Spiritual Machines Acoustic Live"? I love the ethereal feel, the atmosphere of the music, the production of the instrumental track... but I gotta say Raine's frankly shoddy vocal work almost ruins the songs for me. Maybe I'm being harsh, but it feels like he's either not trying or has ...

My favorite song is definitely Life. I started listening to OLP in 2003 and bought their Live album followed by Naveed, Happiness and Gravity. I liked the band and enjoyed both their Gravity and pre-Gravity works (which is kind of odd, I guess, since most people are on either one side of the fence ...

As requested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0k6uHXjWKU

Fair warning, this is about 2.5 hours long. However, it is a great abridged version of Mike's life and his times with OLP, Fair Ground, Crash Karma, as well as his endeavors at Pocket Studios, and his current role in mixing live recordings ...

I think the sad truth is that his original vocal style was unbelievably exhausting.
Take this performance of 'life' and tell me that singing like this on the daily wouldn't become exhausting.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xE7W96koNgw
I don't know about you but I really enjoyed the acoustic ...

I am really getting impressed with some of these unreleased tracks from the HIPT era. It's actually starting to change my view of HIPT as a whole. There is so much here that never made it onto the album likely due to the pressure from the label. I always thought of HIPT as a mellow album with one ...

Wow, this is so amazing that the band is doing this. Thank you so much, OLP!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to sign up on the list until after the No Warning email was sent out so I may not get to hear that song. That said, I am really loving Not Afraid. I even enjoyed the pop version of this song ...

not bad considering heavyweight wasn't even released as a single in the USA - as fast will be the first true single released in the USA and I think it should do pretty well. Couple that with a bigger tour in the fall/end of summer and things should pick up charting wise
Even from an objective ...

1. Spiritual Machines
2. Clumsy
3. Happiness
4. Gravity
5. Curve
6. Naveed
7. HIPT
8. Burn Burn

Gravity, Curve and Naveed are all a pretty close fight in terms of their ranking position and yet they probably have the least in common with each other out of the eight, in my opinion.

That said, Curve ...

I didn't become a fan until 2003, but I think the reaction to Happiness was quite a bit more muted then it was for Clumsy. Clumsy was an absolute pop-culture masterpiece that pretty much got OLP on top of the musical food chain for a few good years (in Canada at least).

I don't think even the ...

Even if this album only ended up having 6 songs, as long as those 6 songs are absolutely amazing then I think this can still be a great album. I mean, HIPT and Burn Burn really only have 3 songs each that I actually enjoy listening to so I think that 6 well-made songs could actually get us as much ...

Taking the music video into consideration:

Best: Is Anybody Home
Worst: The End is Where We Begin

Not taking the music video into consideration:

Best: Life
Worst: The End is Where We Begin

The falsetto really caught me off guard in this song. When I first heard the studio release I was actually pretty convinced that Raine was using some sort of synthesizer/e-music to hit the pitch that we heard in the verses. OLP's niagra performance convinced me otherwise, however, and I'm happy to ...

Oh, I don't know that he was saying Mike in particular was the key part of OLP that made it OLP, DG. Illusion, correct me if I'm misrepresenting your point, but it seemed to me that the post was emphasizing more Mike's role in the relationship than Mike as a person or guitarist. He was, in Illusion ...

I'm pretty sure they've stated in the past that the band wanted to go in one direction with the music, and Mike wanted to do use the same ideas over and over. What Mike did well, was create that initial bond with the fans. I agree that he added a creative element, but nothing new past Happiness ...

Mike's contributions to the band went way beyond anything that he contributed as a guitarist.

He added a collaborative piece to the song writing process that sharpened Raine's own abilities to create music. The end result were five artisitcally creative albums that had the ability to attract ...

That was a pretty honest interview on Raine's part. Way better then that four guys in a room tag line from the last album.

Completely disagree Illusion... I think the verses are a bit too generic and predictable, going through the usual rhyming motions and, as people have said, Raine's voice isn't very impressive there.

The chorus, on the other hand, is very creative, and reminds me of the off-beat choruses from SM ...

TW, I am going to spill out all the thoughts that were going through my head on a first listen to this demo (which will probably be close to what a lot of OLP's listeners will be thinking when they hear this song for the first time on their car radios).

First off, great work with the verse. I ...

1. Spititual Machines - Enough said. Art rock masterpiece comparable to Ok Computer. It's only flaw was that it was just a little behind it's time...I think if it had been released on the other side of Y2K, this album would have been bigger then Clumsy.

2. Clumsy - OLP at their best. Every song ...

I'd say this album has stood the test of time second only to Clumsy. I still routinely hear Innocent and SOT played on canadian radio waves. Innocent even got a second wave of life when it was re-imagined and performed by David Cook on American Idol a few years back.