Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 08/05/06
Label: WEA

Funny thing, life. How we're all thrown into this senseless old world, only for a combination of fate, circumstance and luck (good or bad) to determine whether our toast falls jam-side up or down. When the night draws in, all of us will probably bleat "I could have been a contender", before we shuffle off into the everlasting beyond. Nowhere is this truism more appropriate than the music industry, and nowhere more specifically than the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

When Nirvana exploded in 1991, the Chili's were looking as relevant as Motley Crue or Twisted Sister: purveyors of charmless funk rock, famous for wearing socks on their dicks and of interest principally to fans of Ned's Atomic Dustbin. One shotgun incident later and that all changed. "Under The Bridge" brought them mainstream recognition and, in the decade since, the Chili's have claimed the scalp of world's biggest band - capable of filling stadiums and, in a rapidly consolidating music industry, afforded the luxury of releasing sprawling double albums like this.

And, if nothing else, "Stadium Arcadium" is certainly sprawling. Like a Yes album, it scatters 28 tracks over two sides ("Mars" and "Jupiter") to predictably mixed effect. Reunited with producer Rick Rubin, it infuriates as much as it enthralls. The good parts? Lead single "Dani California" is a sleek arena-filling sandwich of Blur's "Country House" and Lynard Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama", while the title track, "Desecration Smile" and "If" highlight a hitherto undetected lightness of touch.

The musicianship is first-rate too. Hardly the barometer of a great album, but guitar god John Frusciante especially excels, leaving even the lesser songs here with a trail of six-string stardust. The one moment where it all comes together, "We Believe" (side two, track 12, if you get that far) is nigh-on perfect - Frusiante flows effortlessly from intricate picking to a John McGeoch-style Banshees riff, while Flea and drummer Chad Smith delicately colour the spaces left behind.

Unfortunately, with so much of the remainder falling into slap-bass familiarity, the strike ratio remains perilously low and about an hour in the listener experiences a sensation which can only be described as 'funk rock bloat'. The other downer is Anthony Kiedis; a singer lacking in both lyrical and vocal dexterity. Caught midway between rap and melody, he's more cheerleader than frontman.

Attempting such an ambitious concept in an age of diminished attention spans should no doubt be applauded, but overstretching itself in a stab at immortality, "Stadium Arcadium" marks a step backwards from 2002's "By The Way". For all of Frusciante's efforts and the occasional sidestep from their fretwankery past, it's still hard to believe that the Chili's got really good. More that they filled a gap when the world got worse.

    by Adam Webb