The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ best album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik benefits immensely from Rick Rubin’s production — John Frusciante’s guitar is less overpoweringly noisy, leaving room for differing textures and clearer lines, while the band overall is more focused and less indulgent, even if some of the grooves drag on too long. Lyrically, Anthony Kiedis is as preoccupied with sex as ever, whether invoking it as his muse, begging for it, or boasting in great detail about his prowess, best showcased on the infectiously funky singles “Give It Away” and “Suck My Kiss.” However, he tempers his testosterone with a more sensitive side, writing about the emotional side of failed relationships (“Breaking the Girl,” “I Could Have Lied”), his drug addictions (“Under the Bridge” and an elegy for Hillel Slovak, “My Lovely Man”), and some hippie-ish calls for a peaceful utopia. Three of those last four songs (excluding “My Lovely Man”) mark the band’s first consistent embrace of lilting acoustic balladry, and while it’s not what Kiedis does best as a vocalist, these are some of the album’s finest moments, varying and expanding the group’s musical and emotional range. Frusciante departed after the supporting tour, leaving Blood Sugar Sex Magik as probably the best album the Chili Peppers will ever make. -Steve Huey
Tracklist:
1 The Power Of Equality 4:00
2 If You Have To Ask 4:11
3 Breaking The Girl 5:03
4 Funky Monks 5:22
5 Suck My Kiss 3:35
6 I Could Have Lied 4:10
7 Mellowship Slinky In B Major 4:00
8 The Righteous & The Wicked 4:05
9 Give It Away 4:45
10 Blood Sugar Sex Magik 4:31
11 Under The Bridge 4:34
12 Naked In The Rain 4:30
13 Apache Rose Peacock 4:43
14 The Greeting Song 3:14
15 My Lovely Man 4:45
16 Sir Psycho Sexy 8:24
17 They’re Red Hot 1:44
Personnel:
Flea – bass, percussion on “Breaking the Girl”
John Frusciante – electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals,
Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
Chad Smith – drums, percussion on “Breaking the Girl”
Additional musicians:
Brendan O’Brien – mellotron on “Breaking the Girl” and “Sir Psycho Sexy”, B3 Organ on “Suck My Kiss” and the B-Side “Soul To Squeeze.”
Gail Frusciante and her friends – choir vocals on “Under the Bridge”
Pete Weiss – jew’s harp on “Give It Away”
Following up Blood Sugar Sex Magik proved to be a difficult task for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In 1993, two years after Blood Sugar, former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro joined up, but it was still another two years before One Hot Minute appeared, due to various personal problems. Navarro’s metallic guitar shredding should have added some weight to the Chili Peppers’ punk-inflected heavy-guitar funk, but tends to make it plodding. By emphasizing the metal, the funk is gradually phased out of the blend, as is melody; the grinding chant of “Warped” is hardly as twisted as anything on Freaky Styley, or even “Give It Away.” The ballads “My Friends” and “Transcending” are blatant attempts to hold on to the mainstream audience gained by “Under the Bridge,” but the melodies are weak and the lyrics are even more feeble. One Hot Minute is as musically ambitious as Blood Sugar Sex Magik, but is even more unfocused, which means it provides the fewest thrills of any of the group’s albums. -Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Tracklist:
1 Warped 5:04
2 Aeroplane 4:45
3 Deep Kick 6:33
4 My Friends 4:02
5 Coffee Shop 3:08
6 Pea 1:47
7 One Big Mob 6:02
8 Walkabout 5:07
9 Tearjerker 4:19
10 One Hot Minute 6:23
11 Falling Into Grace 3:48
12 Shallow Be Thy Game 4:34
13 Transcending 5:46
Personnel:
Flea – bass guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals on “Pea” and co-lead vocals on “Deep Kick”
Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
Dave Navarro – guitars, backing vocals
Chad Smith – drums
Additional musicians:
Keith “Tree” Barry – violin on “Tearjerker”
Jimmy Boyle – backing vocals
Lenny Castro – percussion on “Walkabout”, “My Friends”, “One Hot Minute”, “Deep Kick”, and “Tearjerker”
Aimee Echo – backing vocals on “One Hot Minute”, “One Big Mob”
Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa – chants on “Falling into Grace”
John Lurie – harmonica on “One Hot Minute”
Stephen Perkins – percussion on “One Big Mob” and “Bob” (iTunes bonus track)
Kristen Vigard – backing vocals on “Falling into Grace”
Many figured that the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ days as undisputed alternative kings were numbered after their lackluster 1995 release One Hot Minute, but like the great phoenix rising from the ashes, this legendary and influential outfit returned back to greatness with 1999’s Californication. An obvious reason for their rebirth is the reappearance of guitarist John Frusciante (replacing Dave Navarro), who left the Peppers in 1992 and disappeared into a haze of hard drugs before cleaning up and returning to the fold in 1998. Frusciante was a main reason for such past band classics as 1989’s Mother’s Milk and 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and proves once and for all to be the quintessential RHCP guitarist. Anthony Kiedis’ vocals have improved dramatically as well, while the rhythm section of bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith remains one of rock’s best. The quartet’s trademark punk-funk can be sampled on such tracks as “Around the World,” “I Like Dirt,” and “Parallel Universe,” but the more pop-oriented material proves to be a pleasant surprise — “Scar Tissue,” “Otherside,” “Easily,” and “Purple Stain” all contain strong melodies and instantly memorable choruses. And like their 1992 introspective hit “Under the Bridge,” there are even a few mellow moments — “Porcelain,” “Road Trippin’,” and the title track. With the instrumentalists’ interplay at an all-time telepathic high and Kiedis peaking as a vocalist, Californication is a bona fide Chili Peppers classic. -Greg Prato
Tracklist:
1 Around The World 3:58
2 Parallel Universe 4:30
3 Scar Tissue 3:37
4 Otherside 4:15
5 Get On Top 3:18
6 Californication 5:21
7 Easily 3:51
8 Porcelain 2:43
9 Emit Remmus 4:00
10 I Like Dirt 2:37
11 This Velvet Glove 3:45
12 Savior 4:52
13 Purple Stain 4:13
14 Right On Time 1:52
15 Road Trippin’ 3:25
Personnel:
Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
Flea – bass, backing vocals
John Frusciante – lead guitar, backing vocals, keyboard
Chad Smith – drums
Additional musicians:
Greg Kurstin – keyboards
Patrick Warren – Chamberlin organ on “Road Trippin’”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ eighth studio album finds the California foursome exploring the more melodic freeways of harmony and texture, contrasting the gritty, funky side streets of their early days. Luckily, with this more sophisticated sound, the Peppers have not sacrificed any of their trademark energy or passions for life, universal love, and (of course) lust. Although they recorded the spiky Abbey Road EP in 1988, this album actually sounds a lot closer to the Beatles’ Abbey Road, with a little of Pet Sounds and elements of Phil Spector’s lushest arrangements all distilled through the band’s well-traveled funk-pop stylings. Harmony vocals and string arrangements have replaced some of the aggressive slap bass that the group was initially recognized for, but fans of both the gentle and the fierce Chili Peppers styles will embrace the title track and first single, “By the Way.” In fact, this song on its own could almost be a brief history of everything The Red Hot Chili Peppers have recorded: fiery Hollywood funk, gentle harmonies, a little bit of singing about girls, a little bit of hanging out in the streets in the summertime, some rapid-fire raps from Anthony Kiedis, some aggro basslines from Flea — the song plays like a three-and-a-half-minute audio version of Behind the Music. Overall, the album leans more toward the melodic end of their oeuvre, but they have grown into this kinder, gentler mode organically, progressively working toward this groove little by little, album by album. What once were snapshots of a spastic punk-funk lifestyle have grown into fully realized short stories of introspection and Californication. Though the pace of the album falters at times (particularly in the verses; the choruses are all pretty spectacular), it is refreshing to see that as the four Chili Peppers continue to grow older and more sure of themselves, their composition and performing skills are maturing along with them. -Zac Johnson
Tracklist:
1 By The Way 3:37
2 Universally Speaking 4:19
3 This Is The Place 4:17
4 Dosed 5:12
5 Don’t Forget Me 4:37
6 The Zephyr Song 3:52
7 Can’t Stop 4:29
8 I Could Die For You 3:13
9 Midnight 4:55
10 Throw Away Your Television 3:44
11 Cabron 3:38
12 Tear 5:17
13 On Mercury 3:28
14 Minor Thing 3:37
15 Warm Tape 4:16
16 Venice Queen 6:07
Personnel:
Michael “Flea” Balzary – bass, trumpet and backing vocals
John Frusciante – guitar, backing vocals, piano, keyboards and modular synthesizer
Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
Chad Smith – drums, percussion
Indulgence has long been a way of life for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, yet they resisted the siren’s call of the double album until 2006’s Stadium Arcadium. Sure, 1991’s breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik was as long as a classic double LP, but such distinctions mattered little in the era when vinyl gave way to CD, and they matter less now, as the CD gradually gives way to digital-only releases. In fact, like how Blood Sugar was the tipping point when the LPs ceded ground to CDs, Stadium Arcadium could be seen as the point when albums were seen as a collection of digital playlists. Yes, it’s pressed up as a two-disc set — including an extravagant but pointless special edition housed in a clunky box that includes a make-yer-own-spinning-top — but this is an album that’s designed for you to mix and match, create your own playlist, rip and burn on your own. It’s designed for you to sequence its 28 songs in some kind of cohesive manner, since the band sure didn’t take the time to do that here; it’s the first major album by a major band that makes as much sense on random as it does in its proper sequencing. Well, that’s not entirely true: the official 28-song album does begin with “Dani California,” the clearest single here, the one thing that truly grabs attention upon first listen and worms its way into your subconscious, where it just won’t let go, as so much of Anthony Kiedis’ catchiest melodies do. After that, it’s a long, winding path of alternately spacey and sunny pop, ballads, and the occasional funk workout that used to be the Chili Peppers’ signature but now functions as a way to break up the monotony. And there needs to be something to break up the monotony, not because the music is bad but because it all exists at the same level and is given a flat, colorless production that has become the signature of Rick Rubin as of late.
Rubin may be able to create the right atmosphere for Flea and John Frusciante to run wild creatively — an opportunity that they seize here, which is indeed a pleasure to hear — but he does nothing to encourage them to brighten the finished recording up with some different textures, or even a greater variety of guitar tones. As such, the bare-bone production combined with the relentless march of songs gives Stadium Arcadium the undeniable feel of wading through the demos for a promising project instead of a sprawling statement of purpose; there’s not enough purpose here for it to be a statement. That fault is down to the band not forming the raw material into something palatable for the listener, but there’s also the problem that as a lyricist Anthony Kiedis just isn’t that deep or clever enough to provide cohesive themes for an album of this length; he tackles no new themes here, nor does he provide new insight to familiar topics. To his credit, he does display a greater versatility as a vocalist, cutting back on the hambone rapping that used to be his signature and crooning throughout the bulk of this album, usually on key. That said, he still has enough goofy tics to undercut his attempts at sincerity, and he tends to be a bit of a liability to the band as a whole; with a different singer, who could help shape and deliver these songs, this album might not seem as formless and gormless. But there is a fair amount of pleasures here, all down to the interplay between Flea and Frusciante. While drummer Chad Smith does prove himself quite versatile here, gracefully following the eccentric turns and meanderings of the bassist and guitarist, the string instruments are the reason to listen to Stadium Arcadium. That’s always been the case to a certain extent with the Chili Peppers, but here it’s especially true, as they push and pull, rave and rumble, lie back and rock out — pretty much spit out anything they can do on their instruments over the course of 28 songs. As good as much of this is, there is a little bit of monotony here, since they’re working variations on their signature themes, and they haven’t found a way to make these variations either transcendent or new; they’re just very good renditions on familiar themes. These tracks rarely betray their origins as studio jams — more than ever, it’s possible to hear that the track came first, then the song — and while that can result in some good listening, it all does kind of drift together. That said, there are no bad tracks here — it’s all of a relatively high quality — but there are no standouts either, so it takes a very dedicated fan to start sorting out the subtleties between the tracks (not the wheat from the chaff, since it’s all wheat). And while those hardcore fans may certainly enjoy the make-your-own-adventure spirit of Stadium Arcadium, it’s hard not to feel that it’s the band’s responsibility to take this very good repetitive album and mold it into something sharper and more effective. So call it the rock version of Peter Jackson’s King Kong: there’s something pretty great and lean buried beneath the excess, but it’s so indulgent, it’s a work that only a fanboy could truly love. -Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Tracklist:
Jupiter
1 Dani California 4:43
2 Snow ((Hey Oh)) 5:34
3 Charlie 4:37
4 Stadium Arcadium 5:15
5 Hump De Bump 3:33
6 She’s Only 18 3:25
7 Slow Cheetah 5:20
8 Torture Me 3:44
9 Strip My Mind 4:19
10 Especially In Michigan 4:01
11 Warlocks 3:25
12 C’mon Girl 3:48
13 Wet Sand 5:09
14 Hey 5:39
Mars
15 Desecration Smile 5:02
16 Tell Me Baby 4:07
17 Hard To Concentrate 4:02
18 21st Century 4:22
19 She Looks To Me 4:06
20 Readymade 4:30
21 If 2:52
22 Make You Feel Better 3:52
23 Animal Bar 5:25
24 So Much I 3:44
25 Storm In A Teacup 3:45
26 We Believe 3:36
27 Turn It Again 6:06
28 Death Of A Martian 4:24
Personnel:
Flea – bass, backing vocals, trumpet
John Frusciante – guitars, backing vocals, keyboards
Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
Chad Smith – drums, percussion
Additional musicians:
Natalie Baber, Mylissa Hoffman, Alexis Izenstark, Spencer Izenstark, Dylan Lerner, Kyle Lerner, Gabrielle Mosbe, Monique Mosbe, Sophia Mosbe, Isabella Shmelev, Landen Starman, Wyatt Starkman – background vocals on “We Believe”
Michael Bulger – trombone on “Turn It Again”
Lenny Castro – percussion
Paulinho da Costa – percussion
Richard Dodd – cello on “She Looks to Me”
Emily Kokal – chorus vocals on “Desecration Smile”
Billy Preston – clavinet on “Warlocks”
Omar Rodríguez-López – guitar solo on “Especially in Michigan”
Brad Warnaar – French horn on “Stadium Arcadium”
Losing John Frusciante for a second time doesn’t send the Red Hot Chili Peppers into a tailspin. By now, the Chili Peppers shed guitarists like a second skin, changing their outer layer but retaining their inner core. Such is the case with I’m with You, the band’s first album since 2006’s Stadium Arcadium. If that double-disc was defined by its unwieldy sprawl, its songs spewed not sequenced, I’m with You is characterized by its focus, both within individual tunes and the songs as a whole. New guitarist Josh Klinghoffer — veteran sideman and longtime pal of Frusciante who provided secondary guitar on the closing stretch of the Stadium Arcadium tour — doesn’t compete for center stage the way previous Peppers did. He doesn’t strut, he weaves, disappearing so completely into the arrangements he doesn’t seem to leave his signature despite the heavy layers of guitars on each cut. This makes I’m with You the flipside of One Hot Minute, where the Chili Peppers bent over backward to accommodate Dave Navarro: the Peppers don’t miss a step, they almost seem relieved to be carrying on without Frusciante. Part of that could be due to a newfound musical elasticity, a reflection of Flea taking music theory classes at USC during the group’s half-decade gap between albums. Certainly a song like “Happiness Loves Company” — half Beach Boys, half Kinks — shows a compositional dexterity unthinkable for previous incarnations of the Peppers, but there’s no showiness here, the album is all about precision. This extends to Anthony Kiedis, who neither hams it up on the ballads nor goofs around on his raps, he merely serves the purposes of the song like the old pro he now is. Ultimately, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are served well by that professionalism; they’re long past the point of proving themselves, they’re no longer here for a party, they’re rock & roll lifers, and I’m with You illustrates they can settle into maturity convincingly. -Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Tracklist:
1 Monarchy Of Roses 4:11
2 Factory Of Faith 4:19
3 Brendan’s Death Song 5:38
4 Ethiopia 3:50
5 Annie Wants A Baby 3:40
6 Look Around 3:28
7 The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie 4:42
8 Did I Let You Know 4:21
9 Goodbye Hooray 3:52
10 Happiness Loves Company 3:33
11 Police Station 5:35
12 Even You Brutus? 4:01
13 Meet Me At The Corner 4:21
14 Dance, Dance, Dance 3:45
Personnel:
Flea – bass guitar, piano, backing vocals
Anthony Kiedis – lead vocals
Chad Smith – drums
Josh Klinghoffer – guitars, backing vocals, keyboards, synthesizer, six-string bass on “Happiness Loves Company”
Additional musicians:
Mike Bulger – trumpet on “Did I Let You Know”
Greg Kurstin – piano (9, 11, 12)
Money Mark – Hammond B3 organ (6)
Mauro Refosco – percussion (all except 3, 9, 13)
Lenny Castro – percussion (3, 9, 13), additional percussion (1, 2, 4, 12, 14)
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