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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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A Crow Left of the Murder Artist: Incubus Epic / Immortal Label: 14 tracks, 58.35 minutes After thirteen years and six albums, it seems Incubus have faced a moment of truth. Duplicating the global success of two albums like Make Yourself and Morning View, which spawned seven major alternative radio hits between them, would be hard for any band. How do you pull a third hit out of the bag? Do you even try? Listening to A Crow Left of the Murder, it seems to me that rather than follow a prescribed formula, vocalist Brendan Boyd and cohorts decided to take a risk and plunge into a frenzied pool of left-field creativity to give birth to this album. Where Morning View was the ultimate surfer’s summer rock album – groovy, occasionally grungy, but more often breezy and laid back under the guidance of producer Scott Litt – Crow is predominantly dark, discordant and structurally dense. The beach party is over, the clouds have rolled in and it’s back to the gloom of big city suburbia. Not coincidentally, this change of pace has been accompanied by a change in producer. Enter the legendary Brendan O’Brien; the man responsible for honing the music of several '90’s bands that were seeking to re-imagine themselves lest they become stale after the most successful albums of their careers at that time. (Think of what O’Brien did with Soundgarden’s Superunknown following Badmotorfinger, Pearl Jam’s VS. following Ten, and King’s X’s Dogman, following their 1994 self-titled bestseller.) Incubus have been unfairly lumped in the nu-metal genre, due partly to their visual similarity to groups like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park; that is, with turntable scratching backing up the rock guitars. However, their music resonates with an unequivocally noticeable naturalness, without the heavily processed Pro-Tools sterility of these younger groups. The raw intensity is perhaps enhanced by the fact that this album was written and recorded in a month. Lyrically, this is another one of those rock albums of the new millennium that has a distinctive post-9/11 nuance to its themes. And as Boyd has reflected on earlier records, he is unafraid to ride the “existential carousel” in his Walt Whitman-esque lyrical musings. Philosophical and spiritual reflections are commonly present in the Incubus oeuvre, but Crow is positively rife with them. With the noise and slamming guitar of the opening single “Megalomaniac,” Boyd appears to be laying savagely into some over-enthusiastic representative of religion. He could be addressing the President of the United States, Osama bin Laden or a televangelist with these words. I hear you on the radio; you permeate my screenThe title track follows, and Boyd sets out his own philosophy in contradistinction to that of the aforementioned accused megalomaniac, essentially describing himself as the individual who tries to think apart from the majority of society. Do you get it yet? Do you get it?From here, things get political. Boyd’s dialectic continues with “Agoraphobia”, an exhortation to take responsibility and change yourself so that you can change the world in which you live, and gets even more directly incisive with “Talk Shows on Mute”: I read the news today, and everything they sayAlthough the kicking intro to “Beware! Criminal!” has a more traditional Incubus groove, the musical highlight of the album is without doubt, “Sick Sad Little World”. The lyrics constitute a tragic, compassionate plea to a suicidal friend, but it is the extended jam interlude that demonstrates the genuine talents of guitarist Michael Einziger, who can pull sounds out of his equipment with skill on par with Audioslave’s Tom Morello. The fulcrum of the album is an explosive piercing rally cry to freedom of expression, especially pertinent from an artist living in a country at war. Whitman would be proud. The tip of my tongue, an offensive is poised and rearing.After the album’s only genuine love song, “Southern Girl,” and another more obscure dissonant rant, “Priceless,” Boyd explores his theological perspectives in two subsequent tracks. The first is a cautionary tale about the devil, set to a brazen, oompah-rock tune, followed by another anti-war statement invoking a word from God ‘above.’ Clearly, Boyd’s worldview is atheistic, or at least non-theistic, as he frequently acknowledges a God-presence within humanity itself, as well as its capacity for evil. Nice car! Where’d ya get your ride?Three tracks, “Smile Lines,” “Here in My Room” and “Leech” round out the album on a decidedly less serious lyrical thread. With phrases like “I understand what they mean when they say high school never ends”, “I’m kicking myself that I shared spit with you”, as well as one of the weirdest euphemisms for sexual intercourse I’ve ever heard in what is, ironically, quite a beautiful song about a one night stand, this trio is perhaps a little puerile in comparison to the rest of the disc. The ending contributes to the fact that overall, A Crow Left of the Murder is a little hard to digest at first. There is nothing as instantly accessible as hits like “Drive,” “Are You In,” or “Wish You Were Here.” Nevertheless, as the cover seems to reflect, this is a thorny, complex album that needs an aural machete to cut through the expectations and truly appreciate the beauty of the roses contained within. As such, the reward is worthy of the journey. Brendan Boughen 3/7/2004
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