Our Lady Peace – Spiritual Machines
One normal day in his hometown of Toronto, Mike Turner, former guitarist of Our Lady Peace, was browsing about a bookstore. This was common practice for Turner, an avid reader. Out of the corner of his eye, Turner suddenly saw a twinkle. He was instantly mesmerized. He turned and examined the phenomenon. He saw that it was a book by Ray Kurzweil, modern inventor and super-genius renowned for his revolutionary, useful machines and his theories relating to computers and their place in the world. “I wish I could say there was some great intellectual motivation, but it has a shiny cover and that was really the only reason I picked it up in the first place,” Turner later said (“Emtee.org”). The book, entitled The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, sparked what many fans would consider the band’s masterpiece, the 2000 album Spiritual Machines.
Ray Kurzweil’s book, written in 1999, presents a glance into the 21st century in which Kurzweil believes the power of the computer will far exceed that of the human brain. As a matter of fact, by the year 2099, Kurzweil believes that there will no longer be “any clear distinction between humans and computers” (Kurzweil 280). Although this seems frightening, Kurzweil truly believes these changes will be beneficial to the human race. Despite Kurzweil’s views being evident, the book does leave the door open enough for the reader to form his own opinion and to take from the book whatever he pleases.
After Mike Turner read Kurzweil’s book, he was so engrossed and fascinated by the subject matter that he presented the book to vocalist/lyricist Raine Maida. Maida, as Turner clearly expected, was also amazed and the gears of his mind began to turn (Chiu par. 6). Thus, the foundation for Spiritual Machines was built. Maida, acknowledged for his vague, yet descriptive lyrics which are open to the listener’s interpretation, was faced with an interesting situation. He was left to analyze Kurzweil’s book much like his fans would explore an Our Lady Peace lyric. This led to an overflow of lyrics, all branching from a similar subject. As Turner said of the book, “One idea would lead to nine or ten other ideas” (Chiu par. 2). Behind the minds of Turner and Maida, the Toronto quintet seemed to be quickly developing their first “concept album.” Right from the start, one thing was clearly obvious: this album was going to be far different than any album Our Lady Peace had done to date.
Soon after he presented the idea of a loosely based concept album to the band, Mike Turner contacted author Ray Kurzweil via e-mail telling him of the band’s intentions. Turner was half-expecting not to get a reply at all. Much to Turner’s delight, Kurzweil had written back the very next day, and was amazed that such a popular band had taken a liking to his work and was honored that an album would be developed from it. A working relationship had begun between the band and Kurzweil, and he was brought in to do some selected readings which would appear on the album (Chiu par. 7). The excerpts are some of the more interesting passages in the book, detailing the history and future of computers, the author’s logical take on death, and a hidden track in which Kurzweil holds a conversation about music of the future with one of the “spiritual machines”, called Molly (Lanni tracks 1, 3, 8, 11, 13, 15). With a deep inspiration and the backing of the author in place, Our Lady Peace was ready to create Spiritual Machines.
Perhaps the most interesting entity of the new album was that it was basically rooted to one concept, and other ideas stemming from that basic concept (Bento par. 7). This was clearly a first for Our Lady Peace, whose previous three albums jumped around subjects like a child playing hopscotch. When reading Kurzweil’s book, Maida was dissecting his own thoughts and came up with a basic rubric by which the entirety of his new lyrics would be based: are we, as humans in the present, really that much different than machines? Raine considered his feeling so genuine that he figured the album should be made in much the same way. As Maida says of the album, “It was done really quickly” and “sporadically” (Bento par. 3). Maida was perhaps seeing himself in some of the lyrics he had written, and truly did not want to lose focus of the songs at hand, as he admits might have happened on the band’s third album, Happiness Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch. In other words, he did not want the new album to sound machine-made and run-of-the-mill. “You kind of lose perspective on 'Is this just a good song or not?' And that might've happened on Happiness a lot where we fine-tuned everything. This time we didn't”, he says (Bento par. 8). As drummer Jeremy Taggart put it briefly, yet so well, “Everything makes sense” (Bento par. 6). When the album was completed and released on December 12, 2000, fans of Our Lady Peace discovered that this album, lyrically and musically, was truly different yet still did not lose its focus, completing Maida’s goal.
After the album kicks off with a short reading by Kurzweil, Our Lady Peace begins “Right Behind You (Mafia)”, Maida’s ode to the predictable loner who stays inside and, perhaps predictably, sits behind a computer all day. It’s all basically routine. The next song, “In Repair”, is basically the summation of the entire album’s message. At a glance, the song seems to take place in a hospital, seemingly a boring, routine day. And, to the view of a person who isn’t thinking deeply, it is. Maida is wondering if people ever think what goes on at a place like this. The speaker in the song is offering his words to a patient in the hospital, who appears to be injured. However, the speaker seems to show little remorse or concern for this person he does not know. Maida sings, “No one’s blaming me/I’m not supposed to wait when they open up your heart” (Lanni track 4). Life changing, and even life threatening, operations, like heart surgery, are taking place every day all across the world. Do even the people performing these operations realize what they are doing? Do they recognize the fact that a human life is in their hands, or do they treat the patient as another job, a “machine”? The point of the song truly is staggering when the listener thinks about it.
Throughout the remainder of the album, “routine” is the clear message. “Middle of Yesterday” details a struggling relationship in which the same things seem to be said over and over again. The lyrics are so incredibly common of almost every situation in which someone has done something to harm another person. The words are cliché, and in presenting the song like a cliché, Maida manages to tie in the concept when the song is taken as an entirety with the album. The speaker repeatedly apologizes with lines like “I’m sorry for the things I forgot to say” and “I’ll make it up to you” (Lanni track 6) which every person has said thousands of times in his or her life. Are these words ever sincere, or are they simply something all people have picked up by listening to others? Other messages conveyed on the album are society’s addiction to television in “Everyone’s a Junkie”, a daydreamer who never follows through on his dreams in “If You Believe”, and a person refusing help in “Are You Sad?”. All of the subjects covered are common, everyday things we hear about, and Maida is exposing people as followers and conformists and these people might not even realize what they are becoming.
Both Spiritual Machines by Our Lady Peace and The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil present new, interesting ideas to the listener or the reader. And, although the titles are practically the same and the album was based off of the book, there is still one big difference in the way that the “Spiritual Machines” are portrayed. While Ray Kurzweil’s “Spiritual Machines”, machines with minds, are the apparent result of the evolution of computers, Raine Maida’s “Spiritual Machines” are the people in today’s world whom the evolution of computers are affecting. These people are becoming machines with minds, allowing themselves to be controlled by the world around them, never looking to change the status quo. Kurzweil looks to the humanization of computers, while Maida points to the mechanization of humans. Yet both the experienced intellect and the young lyricist share the same ambition: the advancement of society through change.
. probably too much analyzing for english
