Incubus is coming home, and the band members are bringing a few people with them.
Tonight, the band will play to a sold-out crowd at the Hollywood Bowl, less than an hour drive from the city of Calabasas, where singer Brandon Boyd, guitarist Mike Einziger and drummer Jose Pasillas formed the band in high school almost 20 years ago. The show marks both a special location and a benchmark time for Incubus; the tour comes in support of “Monuments and Melodies,” a two-disc compilation of hits and rarities, along with two new songs.
Bassist Ben Kenney, a former guitarist for hip-hop band The Roots who joined Incubus in 2003, said tonight’s show is a big deal, especially for the founding members. “They have a lot of sentimental attachment to the Hollywood Bowl, and as far as playing Los Angeles, it’s kind of the highest honor,” he said.
As with “Monuments and Melodies,” the performance will combine the hits that propelled Incubus to its Bowl-worthy heights of popularity with the lesser-known and more idiosyncratic work of its early years.
“We really try to play something for everybody: something for new fans and something for old fans,” Kenney said.
“Something for everybody” encompasses a wider range of material for Incubus than it might for most bands capable of drawing arena-sized crowds. The group may have gravitated toward more mainstream rock sensibilities since the funk metal of its early tunes, but it has largely retained the affection of critics by taking its music in a new direction with each album.
According to Kenney, that’s a conscious decision.
“At this point, it’s kind of luck to be even making records,” he said. “There are a lot of bands that have gone through that part of their life span already, and they’re not looking to get in and make records in a creative way and a very adventurous kind of way. We’re lucky to be here, so we try to make the most out of each time. There might not be a next record, so each time you make a record, you want to get yours.”
“Monuments and Melodies,” boasting cover art designed by Boyd, places the band’s diversity front and center.The first disc, showcasing the radio hits, navigates the band’s career from the acoustic ballad “Drive,” which established Incubus as a nationwide success in 2000, through four singles from the most recent album, “Light Grenades.” The second disc features rare cuts from every step of the journey, including an acoustic version of early fan favorite “A Certain Shade of Green” and a cover of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.”
Also included are two new songs, which Incubus recorded in December for the album. “Black Heart Inertia” and “Midnight Swim” both bear stylistic similarities to the lighter, more accessible “Light Grenades,” but Kenney warns that they aren’t necessarily indicative of what the next record will sound like.
“That’s where we were at in December when we put those songs together,” he said. “The next time we sit down to write a record, I can’t tell you what it’s going to be like, because that’s going to be its own experience in itself.”
Kenney recognizes that Incubus has built itself a unique kind of career, gaining commercial success without losing the kind of cult following that is usually restricted to underground acts, and he doesn’t take that for granted.
The band has “people who are really into it and people who are into it kind of in passing,” he said, “and it’s pretty awesome to have that because you can do stuff like a rarities record, where you put together a whole bunch of demos and things like that that nobody’s ever heard, and there’s an audience for that. Then you can go and play the Hollywood Bowl and have people fill it out. It’s a big deal to be able to have both.”