{"id":558484,"date":"2026-06-28T14:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T14:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/558484\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T14:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T14:57:11","slug":"our-lady-peace-battle-tech-look-back-on-spiritual-machines-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/558484\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Lady Peace Battle Tech, Look Back on ‘Spiritual Machines’ Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMuch like their 1990s grunge and alt-rock contemporaries in America, Canada\u2019s Our Lady Peace<\/a> were writing and recording murky, sorrowful songs about youthful frustration and adult rage, love lost and societal alienation. But there was always an underlying theme of hope throughout the larger message.<\/p>\n

\n\tThirty-plus years since their debut album, 1994\u2019s Naveed, the band is soldiering on, and celebrating their three-decade longevity. On this particular night, it\u2019s onstage at Plaza Live in Orlando, Florida, where Our Lady Peace are playing a sold-out show some 1,300 miles from their hometown of Toronto.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think music is defined in years or numbers,\u201d Raine Maida, the band\u2019s lead singer, tells Rolling Stone. \u201cI think it\u2019s defined in energy, and in energy around the band. Right now is some of the best energy we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Maida\u2019s soaring, high-pitched voice and the band\u2019s arena-filling sound, Our Lady Peace pulled off that rare feat<\/a> for a Canadian<\/a> group: making a dent across the border in the U.S. market. Singles like \u201cStarseed,\u201d \u201cClumsy,\u201d and \u201cSomewhere Out There\u201d all cracked the Top 10 of Billboard\u2019s alt-rock chart in the late Nineties and early Aughts, fueled in part by the band\u2019s commitment to never lean too far into the dour.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs heavy as we get, as dark as we get musically, I think there\u2019s always this hopefulness and this light within it,\u201d bassist Duncan Coutts says.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnstage in Orlando, Our Lady Peace open with 1997\u2019s hit \u201cSuperman\u2019s Dead,\u201d giving the crowd, many longtime fans now sporting gray hair and with their own kids in tow, a jolt back to the past. But don\u2019t dare call it \u201cnostalgia.\u201d \u201cThat word makes me want to throw up,\u201d Maida scoffs.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo be sure, Our Lady Peace have always been forward looking, especially at the tail end of the Nineties, when Maida\u2019s lyrics became more cerebral. The songwriter grew skeptical of, even alarmed, by the increasing presence of the internet and big tech. While reading 1999\u2019s The Age of Spiritual Machines, by futurist\/scientist Raymond Kurzweil, he became concerned by where society was headed and channeled his anxieties into a new OLP album, 2000\u2019s Spiritual Machines.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was this incredible thought-journey on what technology could do, what AI could do,\u201d Maida says of Kurzweil\u2019s book. \u201cBut no one knew. I don\u2019t even know if Ray knew. I don\u2019t think he had confidence in the exponential power of technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFive of the tracks on Spiritual Machines were spoken-word excerpts from Kurzweil himself, including the ominous \u201cR.K. 2029.\u201d<\/a> \u201cThe year is 2029,\u201d Kurzweil\u2019s monotone is heard saying on the LP. \u201cThe machines will convince us that they are conscious, that they have their own agenda worthy of our respect. They\u2019ll embody human qualities and claim to be human, and we\u2019ll believe them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s going to happen in the next three years,\u201d Maida says. \u201cLive music and live sports \u2014 that\u2019s what\u2019s going to survive, that communal moment people just run to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough this current U.S. tour is honoring 30 years of Our Lady Peace\u2019s Naveed, Maida is more focused on the recent 25th anniversary of Spiritual Machines. He can\u2019t help but worry if what Kurzweil wrote about, and what he and the band recorded on the album, is all coming true.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have teenage kids. I\u2019m seeing in their psyches what [technology] is conjuring up, and it\u2019s stressful,\u201d Maida says. \u201cThe juxtaposition of us getting to go celebrate onstage every night with people, and see them crying in the audience and living through those older songs \u2014 that\u2019s when art is great, when it\u2019s a reflection of what\u2019s happening in society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tIn May, the four-piece \u2014 rounded out by guitarist Steve Mazur and drummer Jason Pierce \u2014 released a concert album that aimed to capture the moments that Maida is talking about. OLP30 is a 23-song snapshot of a still vital band with 10 studio albums under its belt. Coutts says they\u2019re already writing for another.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s musical conversation going on, which is important for the life of a band. If you\u2019re not growing, you\u2019re dying,\u201d he says. \u201c[Throughout] our career, we didn\u2019t have the recipe for Coke, we didn\u2019t make the same thing over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThat musical diversity prepared Our Lady Peace for their battle with the machines that Kurzweil warned about. While Maida and the band didn\u2019t start out with such high stakes in mind, he\u2019s embraced the mission \u2014 and is sure that the live music experience, like the one in Orlando and on upcoming dates of their tour, will keep us human.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019ll be this euphoric experience that\u2019s elevated, because of everything else changing around us,\u201d Maida says. \u201cThat is so precious, and we\u2019re starting to feel like that\u2019s why we want to protect it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much like their 1990s grunge and alt-rock contemporaries in America, Canada\u2019s Our Lady Peace were writing and recording…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,19,17,337,238895],"class_list":["post-558484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-our-lady-peace"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116828323857818699","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}