This month, Incubus reinvented one of their most beloved albums with the release of Morning View XXIII, a track-by-track re-recording of their 2001 album — and the process of returning to their fourth studio album may ultimately speed up the release of their in-the-works ninth album.
“This new version [of Morning View] has been a jumping-off point, too, because we’ve been working on new music steadily over the last several months,” Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger tells Billboard during a Zoom chat earlier this month. The band’s recent tour of Australia, New Zealand and Asia “took us away from that process for a little bit,” Einziger continues, “but we’re jumping right back into it. All of it has reinvigorated us in ways that are new, that are going to result in new music from us that’s different than music we made before.”
Before Incubus begins unveiling the follow-up to 2017’s 8, however, they felt the need to revisit Morning View, which included alt-rock hits like “Wish You Were Here” and “Nice to Know You,” and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 upon its October 2001 release. Singer Brandon Boyd says that the band originally wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Morning View, but that the pandemic prohibited any extensive plans in 2021.
“So we did this livestream event from the room where we wrote and recorded the record, and it was a really fun challenge,” says Boyd. “I was listening to the live recording, and it was good — but to me, it wasn’t special enough. And then we started playing with the idea of properly recording it.”
That thought resurfaced last October, after Incubus performed Morning View in its entirety during a one-off show at the Hollywood Bowl. “It felt like a genuine, very authentic connection from the audience to a group of songs that we wrote quite a long time ago,” Einziger adds. “And it made me a lot more excited about the idea of re-recording these songs.”
The stylistic tweaks on Morning View XXIII are fan-friendly: “Echo,” for instance, tacks on a full extra minute for a blistering outro that had recently become a live staple, while the slow build of the “Nice to Know You” opening gets stretched out and more muscular. Meanwhile, the presence of new bassist Nicole Row, who officially stepped in for longtime bassist Ben Kenney last year, “re-engaged” the rest of the band with her energy, says Boyd. “Re-recording this record reminded us again how lucky we are to be able to write music in a room, with people that we love and admire.”
In late August, Incubus will kick off a 10-date arena run, where they’ll perform the entirety of Morning View as well as other hits from their catalog. In the meantime, the band will keep plugging away at their next album, which will end Incubus’ longest drought between studio albums upon its release.
“We’ve written probably half a record already,” says Boyd. “We have another 30 ideas that we’re still chipping away at, and it feels like we just got started. I think the plan is to keep writing, [and] probably start recording while we’re writing. The way that people seem to absorb music now is so vastly different than when Morning View came out — we don’t have to have a finished album to start releasing songs. … It’s fun to listen to an album from front to back to see the artist’s full vision, but that doesn’t mean we can’t put out a single or two while we’re still writing the record, so that’s probably what we’re going to do.”