A house on Morning View Drive in Malibu, California, became a recording studio for the American rock band Incubus in the spring of 2001. The band lived there while making their fourth album, and the street name gave the record its title. On October 23, 2001, Morning View was released on Epic and Immortal Records.
Leaving the nü-metal sound behind
By then Incubus had already started moving away from nü-metal, the rap-rock style they had been associated with earlier. Guitarist Mike Einziger said the group deliberately dropped the heavy sound and did not want to be part of that scene. The album stretched from soft rock to hard rock, but the direction was clear: this was alternative rock, not a contest of riffs.
Guitarist Mike Einziger said the group deliberately dropped the heavy sound and did not want to be part of that scene.
Singer Brandon Boyd was writing from a bruised place. He recorded the album after two painful breakups, and the songs carry that ache without turning it into anger. The singles show the range: the singles Wish You Were Here, Nice to Know You, Warning, and Are You In?. Boyd later said he had gone into the sessions carrying the weight of two painful breakups, and that ache shaped the way he sang. The songs never tip into rage; instead they move between longing and a quiet kind of hope.
Pipa, orchestra and recorded frogs
The strangest choice came at the end. Aqueous Transmission, the closing track, runs seven minutes and forty-six seconds and uses Chinese instruments including a pipa, plus a Japanese orchestra led by Suzie Katayama. The pipa was a gift to Mike Einziger from Steve Vai. The last minute of the song is just frogs, recorded on the street in Malibu, recorded on the street in Malibu.
The band had sketched around thirty songs and kept only thirteen, cutting the album down to what felt essential. That discipline paid off fast. Morning View debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 266,000 copies in its first week, and went on to become the best-selling Incubus album with double platinum status. Not everything the band sketched made the final cut. One of the songs left off the album, "Anything," later appeared on the compilation Monuments and Melodies. The same collection also gathered several Morning View singles, including "Wish You Were Here" and "Nice to Know You." The band had sketched around thirty songs and kept only thirteen, cutting the album down to what felt essential. That discipline paid off fast. Morning View debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 266,000 copies in its first week, and went on to become the best-selling Incubus album with double platinum status. Not everything the band sketched made the final cut. One of the songs left off the album, "Anything," later appeared on the compilation Monuments and Melodies. The same collection also gathered several Morning View singles, including "Wish You Were Here" and "Nice to Know You."
One video nearly derailed the momentum. The clip for Wish You Were Here was banned because it resembled the events of September 11, 2001, and the label replaced it with a performance version filmed in a studio. The song survived the controversy, and the album kept climbing. The band had sketched around thirty songs and kept only thirteen, cutting the album down to what felt essential. That discipline paid off fast. Morning View debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 266,000 copies in its first week, and went on to become the best-selling Incubus album with double platinum status. Not everything the band sketched made the final cut. One of the songs left off the album, "Anything," later appeared on the compilation Monuments and Melodies. The same collection also gathered several Morning View singles, including "Wish You Were Here" and "Nice to Know You."
The lineup that made Morning View did not last. Bassist Alex Katunich, known as Dirk Lance, left the group in 2003, making this the final Incubus album with him. The band toured through that year, but the core that had lived together in Malibu was already breaking apart.
The album came back in a new form. In 2023 the group announced a full re-recording titled Morning View XXIII, released on 10 May 2024 on Virgin Music. The new version featured bassist Nicole Row, who had replaced Ben Kenney. The songs stayed, but the house on Morning View Drive remained the place where Incubus chose to sound like no one else.