Incubus frontman Brandon Boyd expects the markedly different sound of "If Not Now, When?", the group's first new album in five years, to greatly expand the dynamic range of its concerts this summer.
"We are, for all intents and purposes, a rock band, so our default mechanism is to smash a cymbal or fill up space with notes or put a heavy bass line here or there", Boyd tells Billboard.com. But he says the quieter, more textured and ambient approach of "If Not Now, When?" "allows different set of ideas into that fold and... create a diversity in our set, which was there before but there's just more diversity now, and it's fun. It's more enjoyable. It's interesting."
Nevertheless, Boyd adds, "We're still a rock band. We're still playing all the songs from all of our other records, but we've mixed in these other things, so now the set has more kinds of peaks and valleys than it ever did. I'm thrilled with how it's coming together."
Incubus - which releases "If Not Now, When?" on July 12 - began honing its new show during a 10-day promotional run during June and Europe. It's now in the midst of a the weeklong "Incubus HQ Live" residency in a converted storefront on Los Angeles' La Brea Avenue, where the group has been streaming 10 hours of live events daily that range from instructional clinics to fan chats, with a concert each night. Incubus played its 2001 album "Morning View" from front-to-back to open the series on June 30, and finishes Wednesday (July 6) with "If Not Now, When?" - which comes out July 12 - in its entirety.
"It's just this fun little experiment", Boyd says. "It's a little scary because it's live, but It's very cool. It's very different because it sounds more like a rehearsal studio than it does a 120-decibel concert; there's no strobe lights or anything, and our listeners are standing a foot away from us while we're playing. It's very revealing and, on a bad moment, vulnerable, but I think that's also one of the strengths. I think it will be something that people will talk about, perhaps, as a future model of ways to let people know that you have a record coming out. And by the time we actually get to the stage and have those 120 decibels masking all of our little mistakes and stuff, it will probably seem easy."
I swear most people in this world don't even know the definition of sell-out but throw it around like they do. This band is far from a sell-out and this album does not put them into the category of a sell-out. It's called evolution or progression, it's called growing up and every single one of their albums, if you've followed their career, has been an evolution. Not one of their albums sounds like the last or the next. Incubus makes albums for themselves, unlike many bands that DO make albums to gain acceptance (ie. sell-out) this album was created the way it is because this is the period of their lives they are in. I'd be interested to see who the artists or bands are who are being listened to by these people who call true artists sell-outs. The album is amazing if you ask me and true to incubus style.
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