01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, July 3, 2004

By RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Incubus' show last night at the Dunkin' Donuts Center was part of the tour to promote their latest album, A Crow Left of the Murder, but the first part of the show was largely a romp through their back catalogue.

Reports from recent shows on this tour indicated that Incubus was mixing up their set list from among their three albums, and while they started with "Megalomaniac," the first song from Crow, songs from 1999's Make Yourself and 2001's Morning View dominated early on.

The older material, by and large, is heavier and not as tuneful as the newer stuff, but it was an interesting, Jane's Addiction-style mix of the hard, the progressive and occasionally the tribal.

And the band's versatile instrumental talents, particularly guitarist Mike Einziger and drummer Jose Pasillas, put them over. Einziger was able to go from art-rock weirdness to classic-rock grooving to modern-rock crunch, sometimes all in one song, sometimes all in one solo. And his vocal harmonies with singer Brandon Boyd on "Wish You Were Here" took the whole song higher.

Boyd's voice is a reedy near-wail, with neither the angsty growl of the modern rocker nor the macho prowl of the classic rocker. It shouldn't work, but it does, mainly because it's clear and cuts through the band, making the lyrics comprehensible even in an arena setting.

The piano-based ballad "Here in My Room" was only the second of the first nine songs to come from the new album, and it ended sweetly, with positively AM radio-style vocal flourishes from Boyd and Einziger.

The hinge of the show was a three-member percussion jam between Boyd, Pasillas and bassist Ben Kenney, which was tightly arranged enough to make it a proper song, not just a show-off. This segued into a Pasillas drum solo that was only slightly less song-oriented.

After that, it was on. "Make Yourself" gave DJ Chris Kilmore a chance to show off his scratching skills (after having spent most of the night providing background video game-like or computerized-voice atmospherics), and then the stage was set for a run through material from the new album. The relatively straight-ahead rock of "Pistola" and "A Crow Left of the Murder" was what the set list had been building to all night.

They didn't need to let up, but they did, with "Talk Show on Mute," before "Sick, Sad Little World," which featured rapid-fire unisons from Kenney, Einziger and Kilmore.

I had to leave during the encores, but they included "Pantomime" and a cover of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun."

Sparta opened the show with a quick six-song set. Three of the members are formerly of the impassioned, emotional modern-punk quintet At the Drive-In.

Sparta's sound mixes frontman Jim Ward's impressive neck-vein-popping wail with guitar interplay (between Ward and Paul Hinojos) that's intermittently reminiscent of the austerity of U2, the snap and crackle of Fugazi and the swirling echo of Ride. And drummer Tony Hajjar mixed athletic fills and off-kilter accents.

They're assuming, rather than earning, license for their high-strung emotionalism, but they're more than tuneful enough that you'll at least grant them a learner's permit.