Back in 2021, alt-rock hitmakers Incubus had big plans to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album “Morning View,” but the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans.

So how about a 23rd- anniversary celebration instead? In May, the Southern California five-piece band released “Morning View XXIII,” a rerecorded version of the 2001 album (a la Taylor Swift, call it “Morning View: Incubus’ Version”), and they’ll perform it in full on their latest tour, which recently kicked off.

“Morning View” marked the group’s commercial peak, and it featured the hit singles “Wish You Were Here” and “Nice to Know You.” It’s a mixture of moods, from crunching hard rock to melodic, earthy ambient rhythms, and the album and its making — it was recorded in an oceanfront Malibu mansion that’s on Morning View Drive, hence the album title — holds a special place in the heart of Incubus frontman Brandon Boyd, 48.

This interview with Boyd has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: How do opening nights usually go for you guys? And how do you evaluate them afterward?

A: It’s an interesting thing. We’ve been at this for quite a long time now, and you would think that it would mostly, you know, fit the way an old hat does. And I suppose for the most part, that is the case. But really it’s the first handful of shows where we always feel a little bit rusty, no matter how much rehearsal we’ve had. We could be rehearsing for an entire month and we’ll go into the first show and feel a little bit out of sorts. But the truth is, most of the time people can’t tell if we’re feeling a touch out of sorts, and maybe that’s a testament to how long we’ve actually been at it. And even if we’re having, God forbid, a night where we’re feeling a little bit rusty, we’re able to smile our way through it. We take what we do very seriously, ... but we don’t necessarily take ourselves that seriously. So when we make mistakes, they’re inevitable. We’re not playing to tracks, there’s really nothing automated about what you hear when you see us onstage. We have samples we’re playing with, and even those are being manipulated live. So what you hear is five people pooling their talents and bringing them to the show. So for better or worse, it’s us.

Q: Were you always planning to re-record “Morning View?” Or were you just planning to do the anniversary tour behind the album? What was the order of events?

A: So many things, I don’t even know where to begin, would not have landed the way they did had the world not taken the turn that it did. I don’t remember the order of events, though I know that we were musing about doing some kind of 20th anniversary, at the very least, a show of some kind, the way we had done a whole tour around the 20th anniversary of “Make Yourself” in 2019. … We were still in a kind of musing stage about doing something similar for “Morning View,” but what wound up happening was kind of interesting and cool in its own right. This band is adaptable. … (During the pandemic) this idea of doing livestreams was gaining steam, and the guys in Good Charlotte had their livestreaming platform, so we signed up with them to do that. We commandeered the house and living room where we had wrote and recorded “Morning View,” and we did a livestream from there, and it seemed to go over really well. So the idea was to put out that recording as a 20th- anniversary celebration, and from there, fast forward, we ended up rerecording the entire thing, except for the drums. We kept the drums from the livestream.

Q: Since the release of “Morning View XXIII,” the most streamed songs on the album aren’t the singles, they’re “Echo,” “Circles” and “Under My Umbrella.” What do you make of that?

A: I can only speculate. I have to assume that some of it is, the singles continue to have a life of their own and the album cuts have always been there, but for whatever reasons, we haven’t played them as much live. “Echo” is a song that we’ve played quite a lot over the years, but the other ones you mentioned, we haven’t touched as much. And so when we were coming into the recording process, they kind of felt like they were still new songs — listened to, you know, millions of times by lots of different people, but we never really reimagined them much in the live sphere, like we had done the singles so often. So when we got to recording them, they had a freshness to them, and that was fun and we really leaned into that.

Q: I understand you’re a bit of a horror movie guy. What types of horror films do you love?

A: I do have a soft spot for horror films. It’s not just horror films across the board, there are some caveats in there, but I definitely am a fan. My caveats started to emerge around the era of “Saw” and some of those, like, gratuitously disturbing-type horror films. Some of them are great, you know, but some of them feel a little bit unnecessary to me. They don’t really like resonate with me as much as, like, the “Evil Dead” trilogy. It still warms my heart to see those, and I find them ingenious in the weirdest possible way. It’s hilarious to me that Part 2 is essentially a remake of Part 1, with a bit more of a budget, and they kept Bruce Campbell. I love that. But after that trilogy I became a Bruce Campbell fan. My friend and I would geek out over anything he was in, and I still find him to be kind of amazing. He’s an incredible pop culture/horror icon. I’ve never met him but I would really like to. It would be really great to meet him and give him a high-five and thank him for bringing a lot of joy and amusement into my life over the years.

Q: What do you take from the experience of going through something like “Morning View” and revisiting it 20 years later?

A: I imagine if we’re still a band that we will be performing songs from “Morning View” probably for the rest of our lives. And it’s not a small thing to make something that swaths of people enjoy and continually go back to. What I’m trying to do is remain as much in a place of gratitude for that kind of attention and appreciation towards our art as I know how. … When we were kids — we were only 15 years old when we started this band — I’m sure there’s some part of us that had big dreams, but I didn’t know what that looked like, so it would be disingenuous for me to say I knew where we were pointing. I really didn’t. I just knew it felt amazing and it felt like we were tapping into something that was authentic, and it felt like we were expressing ourselves in a very authentic way. And so we just kept leaning into it, and that’s still what we do to this day.