Red Hot Chili Peppers
Stadium Arcadium
BY CHUCK ARNOLD
To make their ninth studio album, the Red Hot Chili Peppers looked back to what was arguably their greatest triumph,1991’s BloodSugarSexMagik: They wrote the songs in the same place,they recorded them in the same Hollywood Hills house, and they used the same producer (the brilliant Rick Rubin). The Chili Peppers ended up recapturing recapturing the old magic and then some,turning out an ambitious, inspired double disc that just may go down as the best thing of their career. Stadium Arcadium hits it out of the park with 28 songs evenly split between two CDs,Jupiter and Mars, which, had they been released individually, would have easily stood alone.
Packaged together, though, there’s more room to showcase the sprawling scope and crack musicianship of a band that, against all odds, continues to evolve. Frontman Anthony Kiedis, especially, has grown from a one-note rap-rocker to a real singer capable of emotional depth and nuance, as well as testosterone-fueled aggression. Each member really gets to shine, though: Flea, in addition to laying down his usual funky bass lines even gets to showoff his trumpet skills.While they take the melodicism of 2002’s By the Way to new heights—a dreamy ballad like “If” would make Coldplay jealous—they also demonstrate that they can still kick it old-school on blustering jams like “Storm in a Teacup?”
THE ESSENTIAL Chili Peppers
Mother’s Milk (1989)
Hot-blooded cuts like just-say-no anthem “Knock Me Down” established them as the funkiest white dudes on the planet.
Californication (1999)
After Dave Navarro’s one-disc stint on 1995, tepid One Hot Minute, this album underlined the importance of returning guitar god John Frusciante.
ByThe Way (2002)
The boys showed that they had become masters of melody and melancholy, exercising strikingly beautiful restraint.
BloodSugarSexMagik (1991)
The breakthrough release that proved they were capable of sensitivity (“Under the Bridge”) as well as swagger “Give It Away,” “Suck My Kiss”).