my earlier reviews post was getting a bit lengthy. so i start anew here. after reading all these reviews, it's interesting to see the good the bad and the ugly. this one is plain ugly.
with reviews like this, I gotta ask myself, how do these critics get their plum jobs? first off, john has been "back with the band" for the past two CDs. not only is he back with the band, but he's prominently heard on stadium arcadium.
second, some reviewers try to be too cute and then write around their cuteness as in: "But cosmic voyagers promising to take you on a voyage to psychedelic musical landscapes?"
spare me.
third, they have poor taste. any critic who can't appreciate this record, fan or no fan, isn't worthy of their job.
fourth, this review comes late, compared to the others, and doesn't add anything of value to the mix. what does it really say? "but the lyrics get in the way." what does that mean, mr. critic? what it means is i, mr. critic, am lame.
Short on Spice -- Red Hot Chili Peppers’ return ends up a bit on the mild side
May 12, 2006
Ryan Lenz
The Associated Press
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have always been hyper-energetic ambassadors of funk. But cosmic voyagers promising to take you on a voyage to psychedelic musical landscapes?
Well, jump on the mothership, baby! The band was promising just that on Stadium Arcadium (Warner Bros.).
The album, 28 songs split between two discs titled “Mars” and “Jupiter,” was supposed to be the band’s long-awaited return to funkadelic realms they knew on BloodSugarSexMagik, the band’s 1991 release that cemented their reputation as artists.
But rather than a blitzkrieg of high-energy music driven by frantic bass rhythms and jaw-dropping lyrics, the album just teases with what it could be.
Maybe expectations are big on a band’s double album, this being the Peppers’ first. Call it the White Album syndrome — everything longer than a single CD must stand beside The Beatles’ legendary magnum opus.
Yet nowhere on the album does Stadium Arcadium pique with anything new.
You can see where the band was a decade ago on “Hump de Bump,” a libidinal groove which brims with slap bass melodies. You can hear where they were five years ago on “Dani California,” a gruff pseudo rap with chord progressions that mirror Tom Petty’s “Last Dance With Mary Jane.”
It’s disappointing — the ingredients were there for this to be something.
Guitarist John Frusciante is back with the band. And banking on the success — and the sound — of BloodSugarSexMagik, the Chili peppers even returned to the same house in the California hills where they recorded that album to produce Stadium.
What they left with, though, was predictable — a departure from those unpredictable pranksters who used to wear nothing but tube socks at live shows.
“Slow Cheetah,” an acoustic ballad filled with brooding lyrics, and heavy-handed guitar melodies, smacks of familiarity. And “C’mon Girl” sounds good, but the lyrics get in the way.
Too often on Stadium, you get the impression that a song was included not because it added to the album musically or thematically, but because the Chili Peppers could add it.
That’s no way to make an album.
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