Healthy in Paranoid Times - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

So it took forever to find another eight or nine songs that we felt could live up to those three. That’s basically what caused all the pain and strife because there’s a lot of it in this record. There’s a lot of walking out. A lot of arguments. A lot of talking about music instead of playing music. It was really interesting to see the process compared to any other record we’d made where you go into the studio for ten weeks and come out and the record’s finished. This was so far away from that.

Raine Maida, on the issues with recording Healthy...

The band returned to Rock's Plantation Studios in Hawaii in May 2003 to begin the first recording sessions for the album. Their intention was to record an album even more simplified than Gravity and even closer in sound to what they sounded like live, an overall different record. "I think we all knew going into it that it was an important record for us," said Duncan Coutts. "I think that when you get more than ten years into a band, It has to be a rebirth for us. We didn't want to go and remake any of our past records." In one month, they recorded 12 songs live off the floor, most in two or three takes each. Following these sessions, several of the songs including "Walking in Circles", "No Warning" and "Wipe That Smile Off your Face" were premiered live. After touring concluded for the year, the band was set to finish the album that October in time for a January 2004 release. While satisfied with the recorded material at first, with time the band became more critical of it and decided they would only be demos. They felt strongly about the songs "Picture", "Will the Future Blame Us?" and "Angels/Losing/Sleep" but felt that the rest of the songs didn't live up to them. "Even though we loved the energy of what we'd done, not enough of the songs were making the hair stand up on the back of your neck and so we realized that we needed to do more work," bass player Duncan Coutts explained. They decided to postpone the album's release until June and then August to continue recording.

The inspiration for the album shifted when Maida traveled to Sudan and Darfur to shoot a documentary with War Child in the middle of recording. "We were there for a couple of weeks, and we came back from that and went right back into the studio, and it was like: 'God, this song sucks. I’m not saying that anymore.' You start reflecting on lyrics and any message you’re trying to get out there, and it really altered everything again." The band recorded in six-week spurts, traveling between studios in Toronto, Los Angeles and Maui, recording more songs. With no deadline from the record company, they kept recording and gaining more perspective. "We'd get together, write, record, take two weeks off, go back in and we ended up doing that on and off for the last two-and-a-half or three years," By this time, over forty songs were recorded including "Picture", "Don't Ask Why" (Where Are You), "Holy Ghost" (Angels/Losing/Sleep) and "Vampires", which was briefly considered for the album's title. The sessions became strained at times as the band couldn't figure out where the album was going. "We had so many songs," said Taggart, "and we just started to go crazy." Many songs went through multiple incarnations such as "Boy", which caused the band a lot of stress and took over three weeks to break down and re-record. They were also butting heads with their producer. "There were some fucking horrible sessions," Maida admitted.

A particularly brutal session took place at Satellite Park Studio in Malibu. "It was like a month of, we'd basically broken up, fired Bob, he quit and then there were those times where it was like, 'Oh my God, that's magic, how do we get more of that?'" Maida even quit once after firing Rock at a group meeting. "For me that was pretty much it. I was pretty much done with the band . . . It was really dark," Maida Noted. Pressure was also coming from the band's management and the record company, who continued to fund the band's sessions. Raine commented, “I think we were at, like, 35 songs, and we all sat in a room and said, ‘Yeah, but there’s only eight that we all like.’ Everyone’s really frustrated.... And I think Bob had even lost perspective at this point. We’re sitting there in this shitty little studio in Malibu, and it just got a little aggressive and agitated in the room."

"It was never a personal thing. It was never, 'I don't want be in a band with you anymore.' It was more, what the hell are we doing? We have to do this faster or we're going to go insane. You can talk up and down about who stormed out or when they stormed out, but the whole point of it is that we kind of lost focus. It felt like we could've been in the studio for another six years and be at the same point. If we didn't finish this record, we would've been pretty bitter people.

Jeremy Taggart, on fighting about Healthy...

The album's release date was once again pushed back to January or March 2005 while a final recording session was held in Mississauga, Ontario to re-record most of the songs that would make the album. During these sessions, guitarist Joel Shearer of the band Pedestrian visited with them and contributed his guitar playing to several tracks. "He came in the last couple of sessions to help us out and to get a little different guitar perspective on there." Duncan Coutts explained, "We had a couple of our friends that came and played. One guy, Adam, played a little B3, and Jason Lader played on that song. He was also our Pro Tools engineer for part of it—not the whole thing, part of it, doing Pro Tools editing. He played on a song that never made the record." Coutts recounted the atmosphere of the final recording session. "It was kind of like a musical community, like friends and musicians would stop by and people that were working there, part of the recording team. Bob sang vocals; Bob played guitar. Eric Helmkamp, Bob’s assistant engineer and Pro Tools engineer—he sang on some stuff. It was just about a musical team." These sessions brought the whole project back in to focus for the band, easing many of the tensions that had arisen earlier. According to Coutts, "I don't know what would have happened if not for that time."

After all was said and done, Our Lady Peace had recorded 45 songs at ten different studios, twelve of which they finally felt satisfied with. The album was mixed by Randy Staub at the studios in Maui as well as at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, B.C.. Mastering was done by George Marino at Sterling Sound in New York City. The album's final release date was assured to be August 30, 2005, two and a half years after recording began.