To be honest I’m not a big fan of ‘greatest hits’ albums. In this day and age when you can download whatever set of tracks you like, and therefore effectively make up your own compilation, the idea of greatest hits is rather redundant. If you’ve already bought the albums of the band in question then a greatest hits album is almost completely redundant, apart from the one or two tracks that they add. And so I had mixed feelings when I heard that my favourite band of the last five years, Incubus, were releasing ‘Momuments and Melodies’.
However, as it turns out, this is rather like the Smashing Pumpkins’ greatest hits offering ‘Rotten Apples’ which featured a generous selection of previously unreleased and difficult-to-obtain tracks. ‘Monuments and Melodies’ contains the latest single ‘Black Heart Intertia’, some b-sides (such as the wonderful ‘Neither Of Us Can See’ featuring Chrissie Hynde), the two extra tracks from the Japanese version of ‘Light Grenades’ (namely ‘Look Alive’ and ‘Punch Drunk’), an acoustic version of the old favourite ‘A Certain Shade Of Green’, a cover version of ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ by Prince, and four other new songs I’ve never heard before. All-in-all that was six new tracks for me, which will tide me over until the next studio album is released in 2010.
I was so excited to find out about Incubus’ new album, which to my disappointment happened to be a greatest hits album. Overall, the selection was just fine. I just wondered why they did not include Summer Romance.