Time flies when Our Lady Peace are having fun.

This time last year, the Canuck alt-rockers were touring in support of album No. 3, the triple-platinum selling Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, mere weeks after its Sept. 21, 1999, release. The likelihood of a follow-up CD surfacing so soon would seem out of the question.

Fourteen months and a couple of arena tours later, out pops Spiritual Machines, which hits stores Tuesday.

"If the creativity's flowing, then we'll tap into it, says bassist Duncan Coutts, who joins singer Raine Maida, guitarist Mike Turner and drummer Jeremy Taggart for a rare club appearance at Carleton University pub Oliver's Tuesday night.

"It's not something you can turn on and turn off when you need to. If it's there, we'll take advantage of it."

Glimpse at the future

During OLP's cross-Canada tour of arenas last fall plugging Happiness ... Turner stumbled upon, in Coutts' words, "a book with a shiny cover" entitled The Age of Spiritual Machines -- When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, author/inventor Ray Kurzweil's preview of the 21st century, based on predictable advances in technology.

An avid reader, Turner found himself so inspired by Kurzweil's theories -- such as humans one day being able to "download" themselves into machines and live forever -- that the guitarist wanted Maida, Coutts and Taggart to give the book a read. Maida then began to write new songs to complement many of Kurzweil's theories during the Happiness ... tour.

Immediately afterwards, OLP headed into the studio to cut what would become Spiritual Machines, even managing to get hold of Kurzweil to contribute spoken-word parts.

"People are throwing around the idea of this being a concept album," Coutts says. "We actually started out to make an album of good songs. Part way in, Mike sat down and made Raine read the book. Those two were so moved by that book. So in that sense, it morphed itself into where it could be a concept album."

A good "six or eight" songs were in the can by August, Coutts says, and the remainder completed once OLP returned from another jaunt across the country, this time as part of their Summersault 2000 tour.

"That was more like a break for us," Coutts says. "And watching the bands that we had on Summersault energized us to go back and finish the record."

Music fans to the nth degree, OLP lined up a stellar Summersault cast and travelled to eight cities, including a sunny Sunday stop at Rideau Carleton Raceway.

It was there, during a live-to-air interview with The Bear's Kath Thompson, that Maida and Turner first leaked word of the fourth CD-in-the-works, describing it as "a lot more live in feel, harder-edged, closer to Naveed."

Coutts disagrees. "If there's anything that this record shares with Naveed, it would be the spirit in which it was made," he says.