Toronto's Our Lady Peace is heading to Hawaii for the month of November to begin work on their first new music since "Spiritual Machines", and they'll be doing so without their long-time producer, Arnold Lanni.
At the helm this time around will be another Canadian, Bob Rock, producer/engineer of such multi-platinum hard-rock acts as Aerosmith and Metallica.
"I think they're excited by the idea of working with somebody they've always admired," says OLP manager Eric Lawrence, adding that it's not certain Rock will be doing the entire album.
"I don't know how this is going to shake up. We might just end up doing a couple of tracks with Bob and a couple of tracks with another producer and a couple with Arnold."
Singer Raine Maida, guitarist Mike Turner, drummer Jeremy Taggart, and bassist Duncan Coutts, as well as tour keyboardist Jamie Edwards, spent a couple of days with Rock at his Maui studio last month.
Lawrence says they came back from the exotic locale expressly to participate in the Music Without Borders Live concert last Sunday (Oct. 21) at Toronto's Air Canada Centre.
The band is following up "Spiritual Machines", which was released in December of 2000 and ended up selling 170,000 copies in Canada.
Even though Maida has been living in Los Angeles recently, the band has been coming together to write new material, without the help of oft quoted "fifth member" Lanni, who is busy producing management-mates Simple Plan for their Lava/Atlantic debut.
"Raine has spent a lot of time here (Toronto), so they write together," says Lawrence. "And they all went to Los Angeles for about a week before they went to Maui with Bob Rock. While they were in Maui they wrote another song, and just yesterday (Tuesday, Oct. 23) they wrote a song."
When they decided to try someone different for album number five, OLP put together a wish list of producers, which included Rock, but it isn't written in stone that the tracks recorded with Rock next month will be for the album.
"We're going forward and recording," says Lawrence. "We've never worked with him before, and we are feeling each other out. There's no record on the schedule, but we're certainly looking to that end."
