Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch

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Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch
Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch cover
Studio album by Our Lady Peace
Released September 21, 1999 (CAN)

September 28, 1999 (USA)

Genre Alternative Rock
Length 43:23
Label Columbia Records
Producer(s) Arnold Lanni
Professional reviews
Our Lady Peace chronology
Clumsy
(1997)
Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch
(1999)
Spiritual Machines
(2000)


Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch is Our Lady Peace's third album. It was released on September 21, 1999 by Sony Records. It peaked at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart.

The songs on Happiness... focus on a lighter melody, often following vocalist Raine Maida's extreme range of octaves sung in a falsetto-like manner. He could travel from one octave to another with ease and very smoothly. This created a very surreal effect to the songs, best shown on songs like "Happiness & the Fish", "Blister" and "Lying Awake", much like "Big Dumb Rocket" from Clumsy. The overall sound was quite a departure from their first album, Naveed, featuring very toned-down guitars and the addition of synthesizers and other instruments, typical in most alternative rock albums.

The lyrics on the album are mostly written in the first-person. The lyrics are usually about unusual themes — laziness, isolation, loneliness and happiness, most explained in a metaphorical manner. The track "Lying Awake" was said to be about Benny Hinn, and how Raine Maida viewed him as a con-artist, trying to scam people into religion. "Annie" is said to be about a girl who is made an outcast, and ends up killing everybody in the end, similar to Pearl Jam's song "Jeremy" on their début album Ten. The band has said in many interviews that "Thief" was about Mina Kim, a girl the band knew who was dying of brain tumor.

Hit singles from Happiness... include "One Man Army", "Is Anybody Home?", and "Thief". The final track on the CD, "Stealing Babies", features Elvin Jones, a famous jazz drummer who died in 2004.

[edit] Track listing

  1. "One Man Army" – 3:22
  2. "Happiness & the Fish" – 3:34
  3. "Potato Girl" – 4:27
  4. "Blister" – 3:57
  5. "Is Anybody Home?" – 3:37
  6. "Waited" – 3:32
  7. "Thief" – 4:01
  8. "Lying Awake" – 4:02
  9. "Annie" – 4:02
  10. "Consequence of Laughing" – 3:16
  11. "Stealing Babies" – 5:30

Music: Raine Maida, Arnold Lanni, Jeremy Taggart, Mike Turner, Duncan Coutts
Words: Raine Maida

[edit] Singles

Our Lady Peace
Raine Maida | Duncan Coutts | Jeremy Taggart | Steve Mazur
Mike Turner | Chris Eacrett | Jamie Edwards | Joel Shearer | Mike Eisenstein | Jim Newell
Discography
Albums: Naveed | Clumsy | Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch | Spiritual Machines | Gravity | Live | Healthy in Paranoid Times | A Decade