Happiness... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch
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| Happiness... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch | |||||
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| Studio album by Our Lady Peace | |||||
| Released | September 21, 1999 (Canada) September 28, 1999 (U.S.) |
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| Genre | Alternative Rock | ||||
| Length | 43:23 | ||||
| Label | Columbia | ||||
| Producer | Arnold Lanni | ||||
| Professional reviews | |||||
| Our Lady Peace chronology | |||||
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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[citation needed]. "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 a brain tumor.[citation needed]
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.
Raine Maida has stated that the album is so tight and so well executed because the band only recorded 12 songs during the Happiness sessions, instead of recording 20 or more like they did with their previous two albums[citation needed]. This allowed each song to have the utmost attention given to it while being written. The only recorded song that did not make the album was the long running concert favorite "Trapeze"[citation needed], which had previously been recorded, and left off of "Clumsy"
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[edit] Track listing
Music by Raine Maida, Arnold Lanni, Jeremy Taggart, Mike Turner, Duncan Coutts. Words by Raine Maida.
- "One Man Army" – 3:22
- "Happiness & the Fish" – 3:34
- "Potato Girl" – 4:27
- "Blister" – 3:57
- "Is Anybody Home?" – 3:37
- "Waited" – 3:32
- "Thief" – 4:01
- "Lying Awake" – 4:02
- "Annie" – 4:02
- "Consequence of Laughing" – 3:16
- "Stealing Babies" – 5:30
- "The Needle And The Damage Done" (Neil Young cover) - 3:44 (Best Buy/Japanese bonus track)
- "Clumsy" - 4:29 (Japanese bonus track)
[edit] Radio Sampler 1
- "Lying Awake"
- "Blister"
- "Potato Girl"
[edit] Radio Sampler 2
- "One Man Army"
- "Is Anybody Home"
- "Potato Girl"
- "Waited"
[edit] Studio Outtakes
- "Trapeze" - song taken from Clumsy sessions; live version available on internet
- "Ordinary/Ordinary Day" - Abandoned track from recording sessions for Happiness. The PPU Christmas 1998 video included clips of the band rehearsing this song; never released
- "Sleeping In" - Abandoned track from recording sessions for Happiness. The lyrics were published in the PPU Christmas 1998 newsletter; never released
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