Red Hot Chili Peppers

2022 - 4 - 1

Post cover — Image courtesy of "The Ringer"

John Frusciante's Red Hot Chili Peppers Return Is Welcome, If ... (The Ringer)

'Unlimited Love' isn't top-tier RHCP, but it may be the band's most consistent album.

(“I could’ve used a little more Frusciante” is always a smart note.) The band saves what may be its best for second to last: Penultimate track “The Heavy Wing” is a five-and-a-half-minute buildup to a full-band workout in which Kiedis and Frusciante trade impassioned vocals as the instrumental section wilds out. To the extent that I take a position concerning the status of the great apes, I wouldn’t wish captivity upon them either, but I fail to follow the train of thought. A few songs—“Black Summer,” “Here Ever After,” “These Are the Ways”—possess the soaring, hooky choruses that this quartet tossed off effortlessly at the turn of the century, but others (“Aquatic Mouth Dance,” “Poster Child”) blend together or last a verse or two too long. The first time I saw RHCP perform—on a double bill with Foo Fighters, another band that refuses to add a much-needed definite article to their name—they covered both “Tiny Dancer” and “What is Soul?”, which was pretty representative of a shape-shifting band that’s written and recorded with Elton John and been produced by George Clinton. Many musicians can be cringy and raunchy, and many can write sweet songs that sit at the intersection of psychedelia and power pop, but few other bands can combine both and somehow make it sound as if it wasn’t the worst idea (or that it was but worked anyway). The chorus of “The Great Apes,” to select one inscrutable passage among many, is a master class in Kiedis: On “She’s a Lover,” he promises to “be a torrid beast” should a woman who needs him wake up and squeeze him, while on “Bastards of Light” he sings, “When it’s said and done / Can I please make you come?” (A fan of this band never needs more than a few seconds of sound to match the musical fingerprints of Flea, Frusciante, or Kiedis.) But the songs aren’t as strong or distinctive as they have been on the band’s best albums, and as always, too many of them made the cut. In 2016, my colleague Rob Harvilla described Klinghoffer’s vibe in a recent “Carpool Karaoke” appearance as “chilling in the backseat in sunglasses, keeping his trap shut, very pleased that no one forcibly opens his door and pushes him out into traffic.” In late 2019, the band abruptly opened that door to jettison Klinghoffer and readmit Frusciante, whose seat Klinghoffer was seemingly semi-aware he was warming all along. Frusciante exited again a few years later, citing exhaustion exacerbated by being “deep into the occult.” Over the next decade, Frusciante made more of his largely inaccessible (and increasingly electronic) solo albums while the Peppers pumped out a couple of competent records in the melodic mold with their fifth recording guitarist, Josh Klinghoffer. If you care about the Chili Peppers—and after all this time, an improbably large number of people still do—you may have found yourself anticipating Unlimited Love with a sense of suspense and curiosity unbecoming a band that by all rights should be washed or disbanded by now. (As a band, that is; as individuals, they’re mostly 60 or about to be.) They’ve sold more than 100 million records, and they’ve sold their song catalog for more than $100 million.

Q&A: Red Hot Chili Peppers Anthony Kiedis And Flea On New ... (Forbes)

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are back with a new album, 'Unlimited Love,' and a new/old guitarist in the returning John Frusciante. I spoke with Flea and ...

So he brought it with the verse and a repetitive part and a bridge, and to me the bridge ended up being the chorus and his choruses ended up being the verse in the way that I was hearing it. And I feel like I'm gonna put on the album and I'm gonna sit down and listen to the whole thing and I'll probably have some of that. It's equal parts real pure dedication to the beauty of music, my desire to build bridges of love with other human beings in a band context and my yearning for community and to connect to the communal creative process with my band mates. And "Not The One" was a song that started off in Flea's garage with just himself playing to a drum machine, and I think he had some sort of a electronic keyboard and bass. I was always so caught up in the moment of trying to be good right then and trying to channel the spirit, and do something that was meaningful to me from my perspective then, that I never really have looked forward into what something might be in the future. And then for me, I just get to go ride around in my old beater of a car that has a CD player and listen over and over to these ideas until I hear what I think is the song within those ideas. It's beautiful, to be a part of that street, it's a big part of my life. But in terms of sequencing, we were just kind of going for vibe to vibe and trying to mix it up and create a bit of a meaningful segue from one to the other. It's a trip, it's a real sort of check-in moment to the journey and the circular nature of it. Our magic is we have chemistry and we have love and we have hate and we have disagreements and we have harmony, depending on any given moment, and all of that is lyrically inspiring to me. "Black Summer" is a song that he brought to the band as a skeletal group of beautiful chords and ideas and arrangement, and then we just layered on top of it. Rick and I ended up, after we recorded the basic tracks, we ended up going to Kauai and taking six months to record vocals during which time I had to write a lot of material, and yeah, the whole thing was under that weird invisible blanket of COVID.

Red Hot Chili Peppers released new music video for "These Are The ... (Chaoszine)

US rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers have released a new music video for their song “These Are The Ways”. The song is part of the band's new studio album ...

Red Hot Chili Peppers trade easy hooks for surprising depth on ... (The A.V. Club)

Guitarist John Frusciante is back, and the band sounds like they want to pretend he never left.

And “Aquatic Mouth Dance” is fun if you’re there for the groove but not the lyrics—the closest the album comes to reverting to the weakness of Kiedis’ worst tendencies, instead of the strength of the band—while “Not The One” sounds like a beach-bound By The Way track. “She’s A Lover” is one of the greatest songs the band has written, certainly over the past 20 years. The bulk of the album blends into its own flavor, and it’s a good one. “These Are The Ways” comes across like the band is trying to be Green Day, but hardcore fans may find it sounds like a weaker version of “Mini Epic (Kill For Your Country).” Similarly, “One Way Traffic” sounds like the halfway point between older cuts like “Storm In A Teacup” and “Save The Population,” and not in a good way—it pairs a stale verse with a chorus that lacks redeeming value.Frusciante, the guitarist affiliated with all the band’s best work, has returned, but he mostly takes a backseat to Flea. Rather than sounding like guitar-based melodic songwriting, tracks like “One Way Traffic,” with its killer bass solo, sound like they came from casual jam sessions. (Even if the culture at large went so far as to enjoy a short-lived comedy podcast dedicated to a loving mockery of the percussive, funky, pop-rock gibberish for which the band is known.) It sounds awkward, but the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ moves over the past few years aren’t without reason: The chemistry of vocalist Anthony Kiedis, drummer Chad Smith, bassist Flea, and returning guitar virtuoso John Frusciante—the band lineup during their early ’90s and ’00s heydays—was always notable for its distinct musical fusion.

Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Unlimited Love' Explores New Frontiers With ... (Variety)

It was worth the wait for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to have guitarist John Frusciante and producer Rick Rubin back on board for a new album.

Wah-wahs and raps on “Poster Child”? The absolutely frightening idea that an “aquatic mouth dance is waiting for you”? Eh. Then again, perfection has never been the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ strong suit. Even the simple way that his galloping strum and f-hole twang cozy up to a quietly swaggering Kiedis on the dumbly titled “White Braids & Pillow Chair” is gorgeous. Maybe, finally, Frusciante’s restless soul has settled and he gets the hint that part of his Red Hot job is to rock, hard. Even the electro-pop-meets-brush-denim country of “Bastards of Light” somehow makes sense within the “Unlimited Love” playlist. It is this balance of experimentalism and familiarity, of the tentative and the trusted, that makes “Unlimited Love” utterly unstoppable and unlike anything you’re likely to hear this year. Though the group’s two most recent albums before “Unlimited Love” were among its most tonic and even touching works, there was little from either album that really stuck to the ribs.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Unleash 17-Track 'Unlimited Love' to the World (Rock Cellar Magazine)

Reunited with John Frusciante, the Red Hot Chili Peppers crafted a powerful musical statement with 'Unlimited Love,' the band's 12th album out now.

ALBUM REVIEW: The journey of #UnlimitedLove is one of renewed passion and vigor, John Frusciante’s return to the Red Hot Chili Peppers injecting new life into the band’s creative well. While it *may* be a few tracks too long, it’s hard to knock the effort. While it may be a few tracks too long, it’s hard to knock the effort. Perhaps it’s riding in the car on your way to school, “Scar Tissue” playing on the local adult contemporary/pop radio station. Hopefully we’ve said something that hasn’t been said before, or at least said it in a way that hasn’t.” He went on to credit Frusciante’s return as a “monumental change in our lives,” one powerful enough to inspire the creative burst laid out on this record. “I really didn’t want to tell the same old story that we’ve been hearing for the last 50 years in rock music,” Kiedis said in a new NME interview about the album.

Albums Out Today: Red Hot Chili Peppers, PUP, Christian Lee ... (Our Culture Mag)

This week's new albums include the latest releases by Red Hot Chili Peppers, PUP, Christian Lee Hutson, Alabaster dePlume, and more.

As an artist, it’s the kind of project you always dream about.” The album features the early tracks ‘Summer in Reverse’, ‘Dead of the Night’, ‘Cut’, and ‘Turns Out I’m Sentimental After All’. That’s the story and the process – and I want to live that way.” We’d go shopping at malls containing caverns and rivers next to Hot Topics and Macys.” “They had to look up and respond to each other, and that’s what we’ve recorded. more eaze, the electronic project of mari maurice, has issued a new album called oneiric. “But it’s a lot more like absurdism than nihilism.” There was a little bit of insecurity with the lyrics. “We (John, Anthony, Chad and Flea) spent thousands of hours, collectively and individually, honing our craft and showing up for one another, to make the best album we could. There is nothing more PUP than a slow and inevitable descent into self-destruction.” The Rick Rubin–produced LP was previewed with the singles ‘Not the One’, ‘Black Summer’, and ‘Poster Child’. “Our only goal is to get lost in the music,” the band said of the record in press materials. “With this record, Phoebe and Conor had an idea that it would be fun to make it to tape. Our antennae attuned to the divine cosmos, we were just so damn grateful for the opportunity to be in a room together, and, once again, try to get better.

6 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Red Hot Chili Peppers ... (Pitchfork)

Also stream new releases from DJ Travella, Christian Lee Hutson, Pastor Champion, and Pillow Queens.

DePlume assembled the record from long improvised pieces that he rearranged and stitched together. Read Sam Sodomsky’s review of Unlimited Love. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Explore the last week