Incubus Revisits 20-Year-Old ‘Make Yourself’ in Secret Troubadour Show
By Steve Baltin
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Incubus’ third album, “Make Yourself.” With tickets going on sale this Friday for a fall tour to mark the occasion, the band got creative with the launch, starting with a three-day pop-up shop in L.A., where the first 50 guests every day were given tickets for a secret show at the Troubadour Wednesday night.
Taking the stage to a packed house of superfans, the quintet played nine songs, opening with “Make Yourself‘s” opening track, “Privilege.” The majority of the set obviously focused on the 20-year-old album in question, but it included hits from other collections as well, including “Anna Molly,” the lead track from 2006’s “Light Grenades,” and “Wish You Were Here,” off 2001’s “Morning View.” As they’ve been doing in recent tours, the band closed the song with a snippet of the Pink Floyd track of the same name.
“Thanks, boys and girls, you’re so fine,” frontman Brandon Boyd told the boisterous club, which had been singing along with every word of “Drive.” The band having fun with the intimate vibe extended to throwing a snippet of Ginuwine’s “Pony” into the closing “A Crow Of The Murder.”
Making sure the night was not just an exercise in nostalgia, the group debuted a surprise new track, the funk-heavy “Into The Summer,” which Boyd said they had just written.
Following the set the band took a short intermission before returning to the stage for a Q&A hosted by KROQ’s Nicole Alvarez. The interview focused on the making and writing of the celebrated album, including how the world tour behind 1997’s “S.C.I.E.N.C.E.” led directly to “Make Yourself,” as the band became, in their words, “more worldly.”
The most amusing tidbit came when Alvarez asked the band how they knew they had made it as “Make Yourself” soared up the top of the charts. Their response: when they appeared on MTV’s “TRL” with Britney Spears.
To celebrate the record, which featured three hit singles, including the band’s biggest commercial hit to date, “Drive,” the SoCal rock heroes are going on a massive fall tour that kicks off September 13 in Denver and runs through December 7 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with notable stops including an Oct. 3 gig at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, an Oct. 26 show in L.A. at the Greek and a Nov. 27 show at Nashville’s storied Ryman Auditorium.
In a press release this week announcing the tour, frontman Brandon Boyd said of the impetus for the anniversary run, “‘Make Yourself’ was such a pivotal moment in our band, and we are beyond excited to reintroduce this album to our audience while also showcasing the many musical roads it ultimately led us down.”
