Though they often play with a familiar steely aggression, the Red Hot Chili Peppers seem nevertheless to be rounding the corner into middle age. I’m With You, the band’s first project since the 2006 double-album Stadium Arcadium, is often focused on departures — of youth and of old friends, perhaps a direct reaction to the exit of guitarist John Frusciante.
The longest layover in band history, clearly, gave them time to think.
Still, this being the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and thunderous bassist Flea being, well, thunderous on the bass, you’d expect most of these ideas to be buried deep in the group’s trademark whomping frat-boy funk, right? You even have lead singer Anthony Kiedis, during the disco-y lead single “Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie,” boasting of a desire to “to rock you like the ’80s.” Not so fast. This Rick Rubin-produced efforts ends up as the most layered, complex offering in a Peppers’ catalog dating back almost three decades.
Flea, seemingly a lifetime removed from wearing tube socks on his privates for photo shoots, has spent time recently studying music theory at the University of Southern California. The Peppers subsequently revamped their writing process, beginning songs as piano compositions before shaping them in the studio. Talented replacement guitarist Josh Kinghoffer then added his own considered asides — proving himself to be a more reflective performer.
All of that plays into the record’s lingering sense of loss, though it never drags I’m With You into a dreary mood. The Red Hot Chili Peppers simply don’t know how to make an album that doesn’t move with a kinetic power, though the musical variety here represents a new wrinkle. “Did I Let You Know,” perhaps best described as a blues reggae, runs so many stock-in-trade double-entendres by that some of them might, in fact, by triples. Been there, done that … until they unleash this mind-blowing mariachi band-influenced horn break. “Look Around” is perhaps the band’s most unfettered, sun-streaked rocker.
It’s doesn’t all connect, of course. Fans of Frusciante’s sledgehammer squall won’t be disappointed as the Peppers burst out with the opening “Monarchy of Roses,” though they will perhaps miss the departed guitarist’s familiar falsetto backing vocals. “Factory of Faith” is nearly sunk by its empty surfer-dude lyrics, until a concluding, insectile flurry of instrumental activity.
With so much change, it’s understandable that the Peppers’ also return to familiar stomping grounds. “Ethiopia” is a towering, if stock showcase for Flea’s grease-popping R&B verve, while “Goodbye Hurray” is so muscular that it sounds, at times, like an outtake from their party-mixtape triumph Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Peppered in between are a group of cinematic ballads, a hit-making move in the past for the group, beginning with “Brendan’s Death Song” — this tolling end-times echo chamber. “Annie Wants a Baby” and “Police Station” delicately detail the toll time takes.
One of the more telling moments, however, arrives with “Meet Me at the Corner,” and its raw-boned solo from Kinghoffer. The track is a world away from the glam-rock emptiness that sunk the Peppers’ last Frusciante-less release, 1995’s One Hot Minute featuring guitarist Dave Navarro.
Instead, the new album’s most recognizable trait is this nearly bottomless bottom end – a canny move at the mixing board by Rubin that, during a period of uncertain transition, pushes the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ most recognizable aural detail to the fore: Flea’s girder-rattling bass lines. And it’s refreshingly concise, after the sprawling, unfocused Stadium Arcadium.
The result: A band that sounds like it’s fully aware of this precarious crossroads moment, both in the sense of its advanced age as a rock band and of its own shifting personnel. Kiedis and Co., it seems, are ready to once again embrace the changes that have followed.
During the titanic closer “Dance, Dance, Dance,” he sings: “Give yourself a chance to find a way.” On this, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ improbably boisterous 10th release, they’ve done just that.
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MORE FROM AROUND THE SOMETHING ELSE! REVIEW WATERCOOLER …
MARK SALESKI: In a stunning turn of events, the new Red Hot Chili Peppers is not only listenable, but actually a lot of fun. Still too long (3 ballad-y numbers? I don’t think so) and some parts are annoyingly loud: Are people deaf? Cripes, there’s a guitar solo that gets washed out by cymbals at one point. Awful. But the new guitar player can and does do a lot of different things. Maybe they’ve actually managed to shrug off ‘Stadium Arcadium.’ Best news of all, Flea is playing is ass off.
TOM JOHNSON: I listened to a bit of it last week and had the same impression. Dare I say it, I kind of felt like it had a bit of the vibe they had on ‘Mother’s Milk.’ I was quite surprised. I haven’t heard anything by these guys in ages that has impressed me in the least bit, so this was kind of a fun shock. It was streaming on iTunes last week, and I’m really curious to see some people who heard that stream and buy the CD, as the iTunes version claims to have been specially mastered for iTunes to “optimize sound quality.” What that means, I can’t imagine.
FRED PHILLIPS: Finally got around to listening to this one, and I’m thoroughly unimpressed. I like the fact that Flea’s thumping again, but beyond that it sounds to me just like another evolution of the same tired crap they’ve been trotting out for the past 20 years or so. Had to go crank “Suck My Kiss” a couple of times to blast the sound of it out of my ears.
SALESKI: Well, I haven’t liked anything they’ve done since ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik,’ so this was quite the surprise.
JOHNSON: Well, it’s been 20 years since that and 22 since ‘Mother’s Milk,’ so we’re both hearing something from the old days of the band in this one. Listening to a bit of ‘Mother’s Milk’ now, I don’t hear what I was thinking I heard in the new one — not the sound, but the spirit, maybe. It’s certainly not as hard or frenetic. But something about it did seem to capture the same all-over-the-place feeling.