“Stadium Arcadium” Warner Brothers
Records
A lot has happened since the Red Hot Chili Peppers burst onto
the streets of Los Angeles with their chaotic brand of punk-funk
rap-rock 24 years ago. Their first 10 years saw them lose their
original guitarist to a drug addiction, earn their own places in
the junkie hall of fame, and make five albums, each better than the
last. The group underwent a shaky period from 1993 to 1998, losing
current guitarist John Frusciante to paranoia and cocaine and
releasing one mediocre album with Dave Navarro in his stead.
After finally getting his head straight, Frusciante returned,
and in 1999 the Peppers recorded their masterpiece,
“Californication,” which launched them into the
mainstream and proved that, somewhere along the line, frontman
Anthony Kiedis had learned how to sing. Three years later came
“By the Way,” an album that revealed a more melodic
side of the Peppers but fell short in several respects.
Which now brings us to “Stadium Arcadium,” the ninth
studio album of one of the most enduring bands in music today.
Sporting two discs with 28 songs and over two hours of music, no
one can criticize the Peppers for a lack of ambition. The album
also puts to rest any question of technical skill to be found among
its members. Kiedis hits notes his addled 20-year-old self never
even dreamt of, Chad Smith continues his 17-year streak of quality
drum-pounding, Frusciante proves he’s the virtuoso some claim
him to be (when he’s not too preoccupied with effects), and
Flea, though he long ago abandoned his “bass in your
face” intensity, lays down some of the best rhythm tracks in
pop music, if somewhat inconsistently.
Unfortunately, the songs themselves rarely add up to the sum of
their parts. The album’s tracks fall quite plainly into three
categories. The first is Pepper-style funk-rock, containing songs
like “Hump de Bump,” “Torture Me” and
“C’mon Girl.” The second is the melodic
stadium-rock introduced on “By the Way” and cemented in
the Peppers’ repertoire with “She Looks to Me,”
“Snow (Hey Oh)” and “Strip My Mind.” The
third witnesses the group treading new ground with “Animal
Bar,” “Hard to Concentrate” and the jazz-infused
“Hey,” among others. While this variety of song styles
does keep things interesting, the album could have benefited from a
more critical filtering process.
Many of the songs suffer from overproduction on Rick
Rubin’s part. The funk-rock lacks the raw feel that give the
tracks energy and the melodic stadium-rock is often layered so
heavily with background vocals and monumental atmospherics that it
dissolves into a syrupy waste. Other tracks suffer from lyrical
shortcomings; Kiedis sticks to his guns, singing about sex, love or
something entirely ambiguous, but his skill with words appears
stretched thin over the 28 tracks.
There are some true gems to be found in “Stadium
Arcadium,” however. “Tell Me Baby” will make
nostalgic fans giddy with its funky old-school feel. The Mars
Volta’s Omar Rodriguez-Lopez makes a tasteful appearance on
“Especially in Michigan” that gives the blistering
guitar outro of “Turn It Again” a run for its money,
while “Wet Sand” and “Desecration Smile”
prove conclusively that the Peppers’ newfound sense of melody
isn’t all bad.
The fact is that, while “Stadium Arcadium”
definitely has its weaknesses, there are very few artists who,
after a quarter century, still make music worth listening to. The
Red Hot Chili Peppers have pulled it off, and for that they deserve
a good deal of respect.
E-mail Duhamel at dduhamel@media.ucla.edu.