Volume 67, Issue 3  

MUSIC REVIEW
 

A Morning With a Melodic View

by Josh R. Becker

Straight from Los Angelos, Californ-I-A, Incubus stuns the public with yet another great album: Morning View. Released late last year, this follow up to their last album, Make Yourself, contains thirteen full tracks that have been growing increasingly popular with the fans, as demonstrated by increased sales and prolonged tour dates. This will be the group’s fifth official studio album, but to understand where its music is coming from, we must backtrack a little.

Incubus vocalist Brandon Boyd and drummer Jose Pasillas went to elementary school together. In 1990, as an eighth grader at the A.E. Wright Middle School, Jose met guitarist Mike Einziger. Later, the pair became friends with bassist Alex Katunich, who had just been kicked out of the school’s jazz band for not knowing how to read music. The trio decided to jam a bit, and later joined up with DJ Chris Kilmore to become Incubus (Latin for nightmare). Incubus finally released their first full-length album, on their own label, on November 1, 1995. They called it Fungus Amongus – and, fortunately, they’ve come a long way since the hard, non-melodic music that typified the songs on that album.

So now they bring us Morning View, on Immortal Records, with a whole new image and outlook on love, life, and especially nature. Morning View will mostly be a disappointment to any of the group’s old fans that are looking for the fast, heavy electronic music of its early days. Though Incubus does still maintain what made it unique back then (syncopated, ever-changing rhythms, with Brandon’s voice improvising around them), the band puts more of an emphasis on art and the tranquility of nature and self-reflection than ever before.

Morning View has been so successful that the band, at the completion of the Morning View tour, had to add even more dates – to come back up the East coast for more performances and then to put the grand finish on their home town, as always. The band is still, even as I write this, touring up the coast for this popular album, with the opening act, “30 Seconds to Mars,” a new and energetic sound that is an obvious contrast to the band’s noisier and less melodic opening acts from the tours of their other albums Enjoy Incubus (January 1997) and S.C.I.E.N.C.E. (September 1997). The music of the show is accompanied by a large video behind the band showing beautiful scenes of nature, placing the band from the shorelines of California to the icebergs of Antarctica.

Morning View’s success is no surprise with the fun and funky groove of “Are You In?” or the melancholy, acoustic “Mexico” and “Echo,” which are traditional love songs that feature a combination of bitterness and regret.  “Just a Phase” talks about how temporary happiness and the world can be, while “11am” and “Warning” advise us to take advantage of our time here and to make choices you won’t later regret. The lyrics of songs like “Nice to Know You,” or the album’s great ending, “Aqueous Transmission,” relate metaphorically to nature: “I dig my toes into the sand...like a thousand diamonds,” “The sky resembles a back lit canopy,” and “I marvel at the stars...further down the river,” are examples.  By far the group’s most ambitious work to date, “Aqueous Transmission” is played with an instrument quite alien to Incubus – and nearly all of rock, to be precise. A “Kyo-kyu” instrument is used here, and is meant to bring to mind the image and analogy of floating freely down a river; hence the content of the song. Vocalist Brandon describes it as “a song so atmospheric and vibratory, it would make those who listened to it doze off into a land of rivers, kung fu, and unicorns.”  This track, which is the thirteenth and final song of the album, may take a while to understand and appreciate fully, but it is what definitely makes the collection complete, expressing its parting message and thoughts.

Morning View’s message, to be brief, is to take a breather and just be yourself. The album also advises us to try and maneuver calmly and smoothly through life’s frequent obstacles.  Perhaps Incubus’s best album – and definitely there most melodic – Morning View is worth a look, even if you hate their old stuff.  In fact, especially if you hate their old stuff. If you’ve never heard them, well, this may be the perfect place to start.

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