Five years separated Light Grenades <\/i>and its follow-up If Not Now, When?<\/i>, but the distance feels longer between what Incubus used to be and what they became. No matter what era of the band you favor \u2013 the pop-alt-rock of Morning View<\/i>, the early days of SCIENCE<\/i> \u2013 you will be surprised when the five-minute title track lopes into view to start off this record, sounding like nothing so much as a Christian rock anthem from your local megachurch band mixed with a U2-arena rock earnestness. <\/p>\n
Yes, Virginia, the young guys who recorded \u201cYou Will Be A Hot Dancer\u201d in 1995 are now singing straightforward, melodic, midtempo songs full of warmth called \u201cFriends And Lovers.\u201d Some bands slide into middle age awkwardly, like Metallica, but these guys sidestep the landmine by flat-out reversing the sound and approach that made their name in the first place. Hell, even Train is edgier than this.<\/p>\n
Not that quieter moments are anathema to Incubus \u2013 some of their best songs, like \u201cDrive\u201d and \u201cMexico,\u201d are acoustic \u2013 and the guys have always had a knack for melodic pop lurking under the surface. But every album prior to this one also had a sense of urgency as a rule, which made the slower songs that much more potent. An album full of slow midtempo pop-rock songs is just dull, and without the hooks or the urgency, the disc just fails to catch fire \u2013 with a few notable exceptions, all on the second half of the album.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason is the seeming lack of band interplay; rarely do these feel like true band efforts instead of Brandon Boyd solo pieces, and without a mandate to do something different the guys end up reworking the same tempo and approach over and over. I started to nod off somewhere around the gray wash of \u201cThe Original,\u201d with visions of 1997\u2019s \u201cBattlestar Scralatchtica\u201d in my head, wondering where this band had gone.<\/p>\n
If you can make it through the first half of the record, though, things get better on the back 9. \u201cDefiance\u201d is an upfront Boyd vocal and an acoustic guitar only; at two minutes, it\u2019s a necessary break and a lead-in to the seven-minute story-song \u201cIn The Company Of Wolves,\u201d which starts confidently in a uniformity with the rest of the album but then abruptly shifts to a finger-popping-bass midsection with only drums and piano accompanying Boyd\u2019s voice from afar. The guitar drops out completely as Boyd intones his words, coming back in only at key times for some feedback-drenched color before the whole thing coalesces into a noisy whole. <\/p>\n
This then gives way to the old-school \u201cSwitchblade,\u201d the only time in which Incubus tries to sound like themselves. But it\u2019s hard not to feel that this is either a leftover song or a bone to fans to keep them interested while the new direction is explored. It\u2019s all good fun, even with the sort-of rap in the verses. \u201cAdolescents\u201d is solid, too, recalling the multi-tracked vocal work and roiling oceanfront feel of Morning View<\/i>, never really comfortably settling and being all the better for it. <\/p>\n
The intense closer \u201cSurface To Air\u201d is the second-best song here and would have made for a much better opener, to be honest. Boyd repeatedly sings \u201cThis is an attempt to connect,\u201d but to whom his band is trying to connect remains a mystery, which ultimately sinks the bulk of this album. Worth seeking out for the three good songs described above if you\u2019ve ever liked this band or really liked Boyd\u2019s solo album, but on the whole, this is a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":33022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6079],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-44804","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-incubus","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44804"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}