A few short months ago, Canadian rockers Our Lady Peace were out on the road with their Summersault project, looking forward to the end of the tour and a few months rest, relaxation and recording.

Or so they thought. The natural life-cycle of the band's third album, Happiness ... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch was coming to a close. The Toronto-based band had been on the road for a year, touring Canada twice and doing extensive jaunts through the U.S. and Europe.

At the time, drummer Jeremy Taggart explained that the group had been doing some rough recordings of songs for their new album. But he didn't anticipate it being released until next spring, at the earliest.

Fast forward to the present and OLP is out on the road again, barnstorming Canadian clubs and small halls to drum up publicity for Spiritual Machines, its fourth album, which hits stores next Tuesday.

So, what happened between then and now?

"Well, we had these six songs that were 90% finished when we went out on Summersault," guitarist Mike Turner explains.

"After we were done we brought them in for the record company to hear, with an eye to making plans for next year. They heard what we were doing and said, 'Well, let's finish the album you're working on.' And we thought, "Album? We're just demoing.'

"But they told us what we had was great, so we went back into the studio with Arn (producer and co-manager Arnold Lanni) and did just that. So here we are," Turner laughs.

He says the quartet -- which also includes singer Raine Maida, drummer Jeremy Taggart and bassist Duncan Coutts -- has been energized by the activity of the past year and hopes the group will be able to sustain its momentum.

"It's kind of refreshing to keep our energy going. I don't buy that record-company marketing-department idea that an album cycle should be two years. I mean, the Beatles had a nine-year career, and we're in our seventh year as a band. Let's just keep going."

Sure, Turner sounds ambitious and assured. But he should.

Spiritual Machines is OLP's best-sounding album, looser and more confident than its predecessors.

This may well be due to its inspiration. The album's title is taken from The Age of Spiritual Machines -- When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, by inventor, technologist and futurist author Ray Kurzweil.

While many have said the new OLP project is a concept album, Turner prefers different terminology.

"I wouldn't say it's a concept album in that we're telling the book," says Turner, the OLP who was first seduced by Kurzweil's writing (and the only band member who has read the whole book).

"It's more a 'music-inspired-by' thing, where we're just taking this notion of machines becoming spiritualized and starting from there.

"But we're not going back to those days of '70s black-light posters. It's not a concept album like that. But it is coming from a unified place, as I think all our records are informed by a specific time, place and frame of mind."

To promote Spiritual Machines, Turner and Co. are playing clubs for the first time in years, arranging for contest winners to win most of the tickets (only 80 tickets will be sold to Friday's show).

The guitarist says the reaction has been wonderful.

"Back close to the people again, it's been great," he says. "We like the big rock thing, we enjoy being in big rooms, but in this environment, the energy that comes from the audience and that comes onstage is really quite immediate."