Duncan Coutts of Our Lady Peace September 28, 2009 by TWRY Staff
After the 2005 release of their album “Healthy In Paranoid Times” it was questionable if the world would ever hear from Our Lady Peace again. While their loyal fan base hoped for the best it seemed as if OLP (Raine Maida on vocals, Duncan Coutts on bass, Jeremy Taggart on drums and Steve Mazur on Guitar) may have called it a day, but now, four years later, the band has resurrected and released their latest album “Burn Burn”.
With a renewed outlook on the band and fresh new ideas the band approached the making of “Burn Burn” with the enthusiasm and drive of their debut release. The band didn’t have to answer to anyone in the studio except themselves, which is sometimes the hardest task of all. Recording the album their own way, on their own time, and on their own dime allowed them the opportunity to give it the perspective and attention needed to make the album everything they wanted it to be. Grabbing the title from the Jack Kerouac novel “On the Road” is no coincidence either. The theme of Kerouac’s quote is one of refusing to compromise and that is exactly the stance Our Lady Peace took going into writing and recording their latest effort. Taking back full control of their musical destiny, the band set forth to write and record an album that captured their raw energy, excitement, and overall passion for who they are as musicians down to their core.
Not wasting any time, the band is already out on the road in support of Burn Burn and loving every minute of it. Bassist Duncan Coutts recently took some time to talk to us about the new album, the recording process and his aversion to social networking.
Interviewed by: Mary Ouellette | September 2009
Congrats on the new album, it’s great to hear new stuff from you guys. The band has described the process of writing and recording the album as a return to your instincts when you went into write your first album. Can you expand on what you meant by that?
think that the similarity is this, the first and second records were made by pretty young guys who were just excited to be in the studio and very much on the green side of things. This album is the first time that we self-produced and I think that the energy in the studio was as close to the energy on those first couple of records. I don’t think they sonically sound the same at all but I think that there’s an excitement and an inherent energy to the recording of this record that was similar to Naveed and Clumsy
So the recording process has been described as a “no-pressure” type situation which is not often what fans might imagine the recording process to be like and it’s been said that you didn’t over think or under think anything so how were you able to find that balance overall?
I think that a lot of people had actually written us off because we’d gone quiet for a little while. We all needed to go away and gather some new influences and new experiences and new ideas so that when we did come back together we’d have something to talk about musically speaking. I think it’s always been our idea that once we feel that we have nothing to say to each other musically anymore that it’s time to hang it up. The way it really went down was when we finally did decide to get back together we knew that it was going to be tough to get perspective when we were self-producing so we never spent more than a week or ten days tops together and we’d work on three to six ideas. We tried not to be precious with those ideas, we’d let them happen organically and as quickly as possible and we were able to tap into some energy that was great. We would record three to six ideas and the key was that we didn’t listen to them immediately after we were done, we didn’t take them back home with us. We wouldn’t see each other from a month to three months because we had the luxury of time and that afforded us the opportunity to gain perspective. The danger is when you record a song, you’re usually excited about it. Then you leave the studio thinking it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, but when you come back after not hearing it for awhile you have a different perspective and that’s the way we made this record. Even though it took about two and a half years to make this record we only recorded for about seven weeks tops.
That was actually something I was going to ask, I did see that the recording process started in early 2007, so that explains it.
Yes, there were periods where we didn’t see each other for four months so you really do get a lot of perspective on what you’ve accomplished up to that point and then it starts to evolve and we got together more frequently. From a business standpoint we’ve been away a long time so it’s not necessarily a great idea but it was the way that we needed to make this record in order for this band to move on and to stay a band. We’ve never felt tighter or better as a band and we’re excited about the record that we made.
