Early into the sessions for its third album, Our Lady Peace was given encouragement from an unlikely source -- jazz drummer Elvin Jones, a cornerstone of John Coltrane's classic 1960-65 quartet.

It turns out Jeremy Taggart, the Canadian rock group's skin pounder, had met Jones through a mutual drum technician and developed enough rapport with the jazz legend to invite him to the recording studio where OLP was making the followup to its breakthrough sophomore disc, Clumsy.

Jones' drumming appears on Stealing Babies, the jazzy closing track to OLP's new CD, Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, which hits stores on Tuesday.

"He got it so quickly," says singer Raine Maida in a telephone interview.

"He was so happy about it.... He said he was going to take that song for his Jazz Machine (group) and play the bridge and outro as a song."

Don't underestimate what a big thumbs-up from Elvin Jones meant to the members of Our Lady Peace.

"To have him come early in the record, I don't think we knew how important it was at the time.... It was kind of a kick in the a--," Maida says.

Indeed, Happiness... sounds like the work of a band hitting its stride.

The new record, again produced by Canadian rock veteran Arnold Lanni, still contains some of OLP's patented guitar-drenched grunge-lite, but generally the band uses a lighter touch and broader strokes.

Annie, for instance, is a melodic Anglo-pop number; Blister shows the influence of Radiohead's OK Computer; and Is Anybody Home? is as close to new wave as OLP will get.

Selling two-million units of Clumsy -- 800,000 south of the border, where OLP has toured extensively -- has obviously given the group confidence.

"We just didn't want songs to be heavy for the sake of being heavy," says Maida."We were secure with who we are.... We didn't give a s--- about what was happening in music."

Or what was happening in the news.

Annie is a song about a "mixed-up girl" who is tormented by her schoolmates and "dreams that everyone is dead." Three weeks after Maida finished the lyric, the Columbine and Taber school shootings happened.

"I don't talk about my lyrics much (to the band)," Maida says.

"But the day I heard the news, I said: 'Guys, the song Annie is written exactly about this.' I felt the need to tell them because I didn't want them to think that morning I had been reading the paper, writing lyrics."

Another thing Maida doesn't talk about: His relationship with singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk.

"We're, uh, pretty good friends."

What about rumours of a December marriage? "That's hilarious. No."