Twenty two years ago, California surf hippies Incubus were hurtling towards multi-platinum status on the back of Drive, an acoustic road-trip anthem which found its way into the US Top 10 and the repertoire of many a bedroom guitarist. Their breakthrough album, Make Yourself, found the quintet inexplicably tagged as nu-metal; its mega-selling follow-up, Morning View, seemed intent to debunk such comparisons by incorporating Chinese instruments, a Japanese orchestra and the sound of recorded frogs.
Sadly, the frogs haven’t made it to Birmingham – perhaps they were delayed at customs – but, after having slightly lost their way in recent years, the band are revisiting those two much-loved albums live. If the more dated songs’ blend of big, sludgy riffs and DJ Kilmore’s hip-hop scratching at least partly explains the nu-metal tag, the Morning View songs in particular suggest that at heart Incubus have always been an expansive Pearl Jam-type rock band with a certain esoteric spirituality. Guitarist Mike Einziger is continually inventive, and frontman Brandon Boyd is an old-school, long-haired, hippyish would-be poet-turned-rock god of the Jim Morrison variety, who implicitly acknowledges the influence when he dips into the Doors’ Riders on the Storm.
