“Wish You Were Here” (from Morning View, 2001)īeing an Incubus fan is a near-constant battle between trying to decide if you want them easy or difficult, as you ultimately applaud them for doing things most bands don’t - including perhaps unflattering vocal choices. Brandon Boyd attacks an otherwise conventional rock song like Ani DiFranco jazzing around her own unfathomable strum patterns. With its easy riff imbued with double-time intensity, warmly harmonized chorus sung with all the earnest anxiety that the goofy title pun on “anomaly” deserves, it’s weird to think this wasn’t a bigger hit.Ĩ. Thanks to its unforgettable hook, “Anna-Molly” might be the quintessential Incubus single.

Its centerpiece “Sick Sad Little World” was a six-minute minor prog epic that compressed their artsy bass moves and time-signature somersaults into something any ’80s kid could process: A Police song! Brandon Boyd’s against-the-beat yelping and the unmistakably “Message in a Bottle”-derived riff here gave Incubus’ nü-metal a welcome jolt of Sting.ġ0. “Sick Sad Little World” (from A Crow Left of the Murder…, 2004)įans disappointed by “Megalomaniac,” the least nuanced Bush diatribe to hit hard-rock radio in 2004 (“You’re no Jesus/ Yeah, you’re no f-ing Elvis”) were probably starting to realize these oddballs were turning into regular-balls, but there’s no way a weirdo title like A Crow Left of the Murder… wasn’t gonna have an off-kilter jam or three.

Incubus band symbol