Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch is the unforgettably-titled third album from the Toronto quartet Our Lady Peace, (Raine Maida, vocals; Mike Turner, guitar; Jeremy Taggart, drums; Duncan Coutts, bass) whose last album, Clumsy, went on to sell more than two million copies worldwide and is rapidly approaching the RIAA platinum mark in the U.S.

"When you get to your third record, you're starting to develop a body of work," says guitarist Mike Turner. "For us, with Naveed, we were a band and a record that came out of absolutely nowhere. Then, Clumsy broadened the palette. Now that we're at Happiness ..., I think you finally start to get a complete picture of this band."

"Lyrically, this album came together as a collection of songs dealing with human obsession," says Our Lady Peace lead singer and lyricist Raine Maida. The lyrics that Raine brought to this new record confront some dark corners of the psyche: the obsession with mortality, the challenge of human relationships, and a search for answers to life's complex questions.

For Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, Our Lady Peace chose once again to record in Toronto's Arnyard Studios, with producer Arnold Lanni, who is unanimously described as the unofficial fifth member of the group. "There's a passion and a respect for music that is a bond between us," says Raine.

"There has to be meaning in every layer of the song for us," admits bassist Duncan Coutts. "When you stop having the passion to make each track, each layer, each part meaningful ... well, then I think you should stop being a musician and go do something else."

For Raine Maida, meaning is central to the band's musical mission. "'One Man Army' is about the struggle for individuality," he says of the first single from the new album. "It's about finding the courage to strip naked and set fire to all your inhibitions. It's about cleansing yourself of all the people and things that suffocate your individuality." Another key track, "Is Anybody Home," is, according to Raine, "a distress signal, really. It's a call to everyone who's found themselves stuck in their rooms having their souls sucked out of them by TV and having television or the Internet mold their values and interests. It's a call for help from one isolated person to another."

Bringing guests into the studio was a natural extension of the commitment this band has had since its inception in 1993; in Mike's words, "the only immutable aspect of Our Lady Peace is that it's an evolving project. We are constantly looking to increase the dimensions of what there is to hear in one of our albums."

73-year-old jazz legend Elvin Jones brought stories of life on the road with John Coltrane. Drummer Jeremy Taggart was the catalyst for his inclusion. "I'd been hearing this guy's playing from the cradle," Jeremy recalls. "My dad would play all these great records of his while I was growing up. I never thought I'd be able to call this guy my friend. Having him appear on our album was a dream come true for me." Jones' genius can be heard on the track, "Stealing Babies."

Boston-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Edwards found the Our Lady Peace collective through a mutual friend and a fortunate coincidence. Skilled in keyboards, guitar, zither, and the Chapman Stick, Jamie is a collaborator with the performance ensemble Blue Man Group and Josh Clayton (School of Fish), a church organist, and a solo artist at home with a repertoire in both classical music and contemporary electronica. "Bringing in a guy like Jamie was really just the product of a realization we came to as a group," states Raine emphatically. "He allowed us to paint with more colors, to give ourselves more freedom to experiment."

"We hope that this third album earns the trust of our fans to be with us for the long haul," says Mike. "In that sense, it's pivotal for us. There are certain bands that I trust, that I have a history with as a fan, and that relationship of trust is so important to us and to our life as a group."

The history of Our Lady Peace begins in 1993 when, shortly after formation, the band cut three demos (including their smash hit "Starseed") with producer Arnold Lanni in his Toronto studio. Those demos quickly led to a deal with Sony Music. Released in 1995, the group's first album, Naveed (released on Relativity in the States), generated the Top 10 Modern Rock and Active Rock hit, "Starseed." Following the album's release, Our Lady Peace embarked on a marathon round of touring, playing more than 400 shows to over half-a-million people as the band shared bills with Alanis Morissette, Bush, Elastica, Sponge, and Better Than Ezra.

The group's success accelerated with the release of Clumsy in 1997. The complex, sophisticated rock songs on the album -- including the U.S. Top 5 Modern Rock Tracks "Superman's Dead" and "Clumsy" -- earned critical accolades for the group, who, in their native Canada, collected two 1998 Juno Awards and two MuchMusic Video Awards.

Since the release of Clumsy, Our Lady Peace has played more than 350 concerts -- including dates with the Rolling Stones, Everclear, Third Eye Blind and others as well as a sold-out arena tour in Canada and SRO headlining dates in Europe. In August 1998, prior to beginning preliminary work for Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, OLP wrapped up 18 months of touring with "Summersault," a multi-band festival -- featuring Our Lady Peace, Garbage, the Crystal Method, Sloan, and Harvey Danger -- conceived and organized by the band's four members. In the summer of 1998, a remixed version of OLP's germinal hit "Starseed" was included in the Armageddon soundtrack, which has gone on to sell nearly four million copies.

On Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch Our Lady Peace continues to deepen the band's sound and sensibility while developing new avenues of musical exploration. Our Lady Peace is taking the group's ever-widening worldwide fan-base another step further on the journey from Naveed to Clumsy to Happiness.