Close your eyes, or gauging the merits of Incubus' latest CD "Morning View" will have you doubting every ounce of musical judgment you possess. Girls/women will have to wonder whether they love the music or just lead singer Brandon Boyd (dubbed "cutie pie" and "MTV's latest weapon of heartbreak" in the latest issue of Spin magazine). Incubus’ latest gains
from divergent viewsIncubus "Morning View"
Sony Music
By Nadine Kam
nkam@starbulletin.comBoys/men will have to wonder whether they revile the band for its MTV-ready looks or for showing its soft, sensitive side once too often. I can hear the chants now -- "Sell outs!" The band doesn't help its cause when the video portion of its CD has them at one point singing badly and referring to the marketing of music, saying, "You can't sell that s--- at the Wal-Mart; gotta be able to sell it at Wal-Mart."
Thankfully, I heard Incubus before spying Boyd, back when there was little to separate the group from any of its SoCal nü-metal, rap, funk and punk brethren. And how the band -- Boyd, Mike Einziger (guitars), Dirk Lance (bass), Jose Pasillas (drums) and DJ Kilmore (turntables) -- has grown, distancing itself from the rest of the clowning surf and skate rats turned "musicians."
"I was never good at being the angry guy," Boyd says on the CD video, and having had the guts to drop out of the competition to be the crudest, loudest, fastest or goofiest band around, they're free to make aural poetry.
A gift for melody first exhibited itself on "Make Yourself," an album that gave us such radio-friendly hits as "Pardon Me," "Drive" and "Stellar," but still, it wasn't enough to sell me on the disc. Then radio introduced the lush and beautiful "Wish You Were Here." Boyd's New Age mystic aura is conveyed in this "Wish" that sounds as if it were written right here, with its simple imagery of planting one's toes in the sand, "counting UFOs, I signal them with my lighter / And in this moment I am happy."
The song is guaranteed to bring out the inner beach bunny even in those who've avoided surf and sand for years.
What's missing from this disc are the pyrotechnics that defeat many a lesser band. The turntables and guitar work of Kilmore and Einziger blend seamlessly into the overall sound. The obligatory, self-indulgent guitar solos are no shows. Rather, with running bass lines as a backdrop, guitars provide more texture and atmosphere than force, like a scattering of shimmering stars. Except, of course, when the band shows its punk and metal roots.
Few would have pegged this band as one most likely to work with a string orchestra, conducted by Suzie Katayama, and what sounds like koto, shamisen and shakuhachi. Other bands have tried to embrace diverse musical languages with patchy results, rarely the kind of clarity and assurance exhibited here.
This is not an easy disc to digest in one sitting, and certainly not one any old 14-year-old would fully appreciate. (I would assume that's the target audience given the video for "Wish You Were Here," with Boyd in front of a wind machine, gusts rippling through his hair and billowing open shirt.)
The disc gets off to a quick start with "Nice to Know You," which hints of what is to come with its many hairpin turns, like a spin around Round Top, part standard metal riffing a la King's X, leading into lush, ringing acoustic chords.
Boyd's voice is not particularly distinctive, but other band members defer to his instrument, which he uses to best effect, at times low and seductive ("Mexico" and "Just a Phase") as befitting the band's namesake, other times sassy ("Blood on the Ground") and reminiscent of his younger rap persona. But his phrasing is always delicious, even with lines like "Call it women's intuition but I think I'm on to something here / Temporaryism has been the Black Plague and the Jesus of our Age," from "Just a Phase."
The disc slows with the fifth track, "11 am," all the way through "Echo," which makes the angry and defensive "Have You Ever?" all the more jolting. This and "Under My Umbrella" feel like lurches backward to appease early fans of the band's full-speed-ahead, damn the dynamics approach. Oh well, it's not easy growing up.
"Are You In" is not so much a song but a groove, pure party on the beach mellow.
Just as to be expected in having recorded this in a beach house, nearly every song evokes water, whether in the form of crashing waves, gentle flowing streams or even suggesting celestial buoyancy as in "Warning," a hook-laden natural for radio. There's a constant feeling of drifting or floating.
"Aqueous Transmission" is a fitting end, offering a glimpse of this band's future as it experiments with Japanese instrumentation and melody. The musicianship might seem clunky to some, but give 'em a break for exploring other worlds. Time may prove them to be pioneers of the 21st century soundscape.
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