If Not Now, When?＜限定盤＞

Seizing their extended half-decade hiatus as an opportunity to reinvent themselves, Incubus dive headfirst into a comfortable middle age on their seventh album, If Not Now, When? This is no crisis, this is deliberate: with the assistance of producer Brendan O’Brien, they’ve turned down the guitars and ratcheted up the synthesizers, trading roiling angst for occasional spells of moodiness, deciding to settle into a warm, textured adult pop that occasionally recalls nothing so much as Neil Finn at his spaciest. Incubus aren’t completely ready to become an AAA act -- they’re spry enough to sound convincing on the clatter of “Switchblade,” the guitars don’t soothe so much as evoke desolate landscapes, vocalist Brandon Boyd still favors some unsettling lyrical imagery -- but the end result is an album on a shaded, comfortable grayscale, music that’s suitably mature yet sidesteps stultifying notions of middlebrow class. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

活動休止期間を経て5年ぶりに到着した新作は、引き続きブレンダン・オブライエンのプロデュース。彼ららしいヘヴィー・ロック曲は先行カット"Adolescent"くらいのもので、カントリー・タッチの"Promise, Promise"をはじめ、落ち着いた雰囲気のスロウ～ミディアムがひしめいている。綱渡りジャケや挑発的な表題に反して、サウンドからは安心感や優しさが沸々と。結成20年、こんなにも温かいインキュバスは初めてだ!
bounce (C)山西絵美