If Not Now, When?

Personnel: Michael Einziger (guitar, piano); The Ann Marie Simpson Orchestra (strings); Chris "DJ" Kilmore (piano, organ, Mellotron, keyboards, turntables); Jose Antonio Pasillas II (drums); Brandon Boyd (percussion).
Recording information: Blackbird Studio, Nashville, TN; Casa Chica, Malibu, CA; Henson Studios, Hollywood, CA.
Arranger: Michael Einziger.
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