So, you've made yourself into a rock star. Your high school garage band has hit it big, laying claim to innumerable fans across the globe and being heralded by a few of the more adventurous critics as the probable future of rock.
Predictably enough, die-hards who were with you from the beginning become absolutely livid and start the familiar accusatory "sellout" chorus, claiming that you forsook your unique funk-metal roots for a more appetizing sort of mainstream weenie-rock.
What better way to reassert your underground chic than with the pressing of a limited release or two?
Thus spoke Einziger, and made it so:Incubus has bought themselves a bit of time between albums, whetting appetites with a set of internet-only CDs that will sell for 10 bucks a pop until they hit the 10,000 mark and then disappear forever.
The wackier of the two is the self-titled album from the Time Lapse Consortium. It's the sole surviving documentation of a live performance at Hollywood's Roxy Theater back in January that paired guitarist Mike Einziger and drummer Jose Pasillas with a strange menagerie of collaborators, including bassist Ben Kenney of artsy hip-hoppers The Roots and keyboardist Neal Evans of lesser-known jam-band Soulive.Singer (and ostensibly djembist and didjeridoodler) Brandon Boyd makes guest appearances on a couple songs and Kenney later joined the band when former bassist and founding member Dirk Lance was kicked out under less than amicable terms. So what we have as a foundation here is essentially the Incubi sans DJ Chris Kilmore.
Strange, then, how this sounds nothing like Incubus. Sure, "A Certain Shade Of Green" is mixed in there, but for the most part this is Einziger's pet project, and he takes it in every direction but the one you're expecting.
The buzz seems to be labeling this as jazz, or at least making use of the adjectival form "jazzy."Come again?Sorry kids, but even "Deep Inside" and "Trouble in 421" were more complex and progressive than this, and those are definitely headbangers. Time Lapse doesn't use marrow-splattering distortion and Einziger whips out some particularly tasty chords every once in a while, but a horn section does not a jazz band make.
Nay, this is an outlet for the repressed funk that has been building up since they allegedly sold out.The guys still have it -- they just bottled it up inside and eventually let it out in a relatively low-profile side project so as to allow themselves to stay on Carson's good side.The old-school purists don't have to be happy about this -- and of course they won't be, because there's no fun in that -- but they do have to stop saying that they don't know where the juice went.
Time Lapse is interesting because of the distance between Einziger's creative vision and Incubus's usual pathways, but it sinks for a related reason:he's not much of a soloist. Despite having 12 supporting musicians on monophonic melody instruments, the guitar is always in the spotlight. Einziger usually pulls off the riffs cleanly and even stomps his wah pedal into the dirt on a few numbers, but it grows repetitive since there's not much variety in the guitar parts and everything else is relegated to the background.
Instrumental but for the bone tossed to Incubus fans that is Boyd's brief vocal performance, this concert is intriguing for about 20 of its 57 minutes: That is, the first two songs in their entirety, the finale, and the first 20 seconds or so of every song in between.
The second limited release is a live quasi-bootleg culled by Sony from this past summer's Lollapalooza tour, on which Incubus held down the sub-vice-presidency behind Audioslave and Jane's Addiction even though it became quite obvious over the course of the evening that they probably should have been headlining. Think of it as a taste of what's to come: in what just might be the ballsiest move conceivable, Incubus has announced their intent to record and release the live material from their 2004 tour -- all of it.
It was at the Palooza that Kenney was brought out from his incubator and introduced to the world as the new bassist.
His capable voice makes even more of an impact behind Brandon's on the pensive "Shudder To Think" cover than does his bass.He's certainly skilled, but sadly there's no slap fury a la "Redefine;" in fact, given The Roots' groove addiction, it would come as no surprise (though it'd still be a bloody shame) if "New Skin" were to be permanently retired from the set list.
"Vitamin" breaks down into a killer jam that kicks off with the sickest intro this side of "Circles," but other than that there's not much of the rearrangement that would inject purpose into a chaotic live restatement of pristine studio recordings that we've all heard a billion times before. There's a Lionel Richie cover (which, remarkably, is rendered with total seriousness) and Kilmore is let off his leash on a few numbers, but there's only one new song.Sadly, that one wasn't really handled properly, either: Of the two that were premiered during Lollapalooza, the stellar "Megalomaniac" gets shafted in favor of the much blander "Pistola."
The role of the audience is minimal -- their cheers are faded in at the beginning and end of each song, but that's about it.There's even one point where Boyd shouts out "Sing with me!" during "Wish You Were Here," the popular radio single, and is met with hilariously deafening silence.As a result, it doesn't really sound like a live album; it sounds more like a collection of demos and interesting covers for diehard fans.
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