Review Summary: Morning fog
Slowly shedding their psylocibin-infused nu metal roots in 1999’s Make Yourself, Incubus catapulted themselves into alt-rock stardom with mega-hit single “Drive”. Far from a one hit wonder however, Make Yourself proved to be a cohesive and hard hitting record that demonstrated depth and technicality, while also drilling down into our collective ears like a slimy sonic Guinea worm.
Blossoming from the seed of Make Yourself in the new millennium, Incubus once again fell headfirst into the radio-friendly alt rock chasm with their follow up 2001 LP Morning View. Generally considered to be two parts of the same pie, Make Yourself proved to be the crunchy yet delicate exterior pastry, while Morning View emerged as the extra saucy, extra slick, and bafflingly hearty meat filling. Springboarding off some pristine production, the quintet threw more than a handful of coal into the songwriting burner and blasted themselves into the stratosphere.
Captain of the OG Morning View frigate, vocalist Brandon Boyd delivered a series of agile vocal performances and thought-provoking lyricism that outshine all to date. Guitarist Mike Einziger painted a sonic canvas with crunchy riffage, reverb and delay drenched landscapes, and even a sprinkling of a Chinese instrument called the pipa (a gift from Steve Vai, no less). Dirk Lance and Jose Pasillas shined brightly in the rhythm section, piling on groove after groove after groove. And, last but certainly not least, Chris Kilmore took a sledgehammer to the caricature of nu metal DJs of the era, adding subtle but unequivocally vital flourishes and ambience throughout. With their powers combined, Incubus created a product undeniably greater than the sum of its parts, and one that holds true all these years later. Simply put, Morning View is a classic.
On the rather bizarrely timed 23-year(ish) anniversary of Morning View, Incubus release Morning View XXIII, a flesh, blood and bones re-recording that was produced in 2023, some 22 years after the original. If the unusual timing isn’t enough of a head scratcher, it ultimately foreshadows a laundry list of puzzling decisions that introduce a shot of vinegar to an otherwise perfectly concocted cocktail.
Album re-recordings, while an undeniably risky manoeuvre, offer artists the chance to revisit and remould material that, after some decades of playing live, assuredly feel stale to their creators. In this respect, the concept of Morning View XXIII makes sense. It is something has been achieved quite successfully by several of Incubus’ contemporaries – The Contortionist’s reimaginings being a perfect example. However, in practice, Morning View XXIII is served up as a cheap carbon copy of the original LP, with very little creative liberty taken to reinvent each slice. Strangely, song structures aren’t markedly different from the original album, and stranger still, neither is the instrumentation. Aside from a couple of slightly elongated instrumental sections, and the addition of new recruit Nicole Row’s backing vocals (who, as an aside, is brilliant), Morning View XXIII is just… the same. Nails once again reach for the noggin for a big ol’ scratch.
What exactly is the point of this album?
Being forthright, the most noticeable change between LPs is the vocals. Sadly, not in a good way. This comes as no surprise to anybody who has been paying even a smidge of attention to Incubus over the last half decade. Brandon has had some public issues with his voice and has lost a substantial amount of dexterity that was always going to make recreating performances from twenty years ago impossible. While he has demonstrated capacity to deliver an engrossing vocal performance as recently as this year (with his feature in “Glitching Prisms” by Night Verses), the change in his voice makes the “Morning-View-From-Wish” approach to this release even more perplexing.
Why recreate an album if you can’t do it better? Why try to out-perfect perfection? At minimum, conquering such a task demands that it be done differently. Differently Incubus did not do.
