Incubus
If Not Now, When?

THE REVIEW

At thirty-five to forty years old, you can't feel a new wave of "Psychopsilocybin" inside you. This is understandable, even desirable. And if you really get that uncontrollable, furious, lustful, and drooling urge for stage diving and screaming like Mike Patton, you are still at a certain age.

Everything that you are is filtered by experiences, tours, new musical fields explored, crappy albums, cute albums, and IN THE WORST CASE MTV. Anyone at thirty-five to forty years old who starts making the same music they did at eighteen often needs money, or does it knowing they'll be ridiculed, OR both.

IN THE BEST CASE, you're called Picciotto, MacKaye, Denison, Yow.

Evidently, Incubus has never considered the risk of reverting to being kids again; their evolution (or involution) progressively flirting with the mainstream hasn't allowed for nostalgic diversions to old masterpieces, yet they maintained among the youngsters the fame of a "grunge band". Let's admit it: from the shifts of "Make Yourself" and "Morning View", through the wildly popular videos for Drive and "I Wish You Were Here", to a flamboyant pseudo-ruckus streak in "A Crow Left Of The Murder..." and "Light Grenades", Incubus has always been "pretty cool." It's a rather strange thing because many - myself included - have continued to listen to them, even without commitment, even feeling somewhat annoyed by them, even missing S.C.I.E.N.C.E.

Five years after "Light Grenades", "If Not Now, When?" arrives. If every Incubus album represents a small shift from the previous one, a new musical sphere explored, their latest effort explores a world devoid of ideas, full of covers, clichéd, with cloying lyrics and hot air. A backdrop of small, crappy singer-songwriters like James Blunt, Mika (listen to the title track to believe it), Paolo Nutini, and Chris Cornell's "Scream!". After the first listen, these seem to be the influences of "If Not Now, When?".

Subsequently, you can even tolerate a handful of tracks. "Defiance", voice and guitar, is quite catchy, as much as it might easily seem like an unreleased Chris Cornell track; "In The Company Of Wolves" is saved by its second, lysergic and edgy half, slightly reminiscent of Porcupine Tree in "The Sky Moves Sideways"; the ballad "Adolescents" sounds like a song from "Morning View" and is not even too bad except that it repeats FAR more than necessary.

Now...

If you don't know Incubus, before getting mired in this album, start with Fungus Amongus and S.C.I.E.N.C.E.

If you know Brandon Boyd and company, if you know the ups and downs of their career, before listening to this album, make a necessary preface in your mind: Incubus should be taken for what they are, namely a band that used to make great music. They would echo Faith No More and Primus without being derivative, the scratching was fabulously integrated, they were truly "badass"! Now they ooze honest mediocrity with tank-top songs and tear-jerker ballads, when things go well.

That way, you won't be too disappointed.