File Under: 90s alt-rock survivors
If You Like: Like you don’t know them
Label: Warner Brothers
While Pearl Jam got the cover of Rolling Stone for putting out an album that didn’t suck, RHCP actually made it for putting out one of the best works of their career. It’s hard to stay relevant in a band’s third decade, and most bands fail miserably (look at Pearl Jam). We still hold RHCP to actual standards instead of giving them the back-handed compliment of saying the album is their best since BloodSugarSexMagik. While that’s true, it gets rightly praised for being great in its own right, not because everything they’ve put out since 1995 was a waste of time (once again, see Pearl Jam).
The Peppers have never been good at cohesive albums. Their minds wander and they put out an inordinate amount of filler. And since this is a double album, Stadium Arcadium is no exception. But it really is remarkable how few missteps there are. And they haven’t lost their ear for really catchy singles. They release catchy songs to suck you in, and then you get exposed to the rest of the work. And while its nice John Fruscante isn’t dead, and he gets his time in the spotlight, this is really Flea’s album. You can hear him everywhere, dragging the rest of the band with him. He’s always been the most conscious of the band’s place in history, and this is his magnum opus. It’s a sprawling thank you to all of their influences, from jazz to funk to punk. It’s a tour de force, really.
They left their contemporaries in the dust a long time ago. Now, they are focusing on not letting anyone catch up. They are truly in their own league: an artistically ambitious band who are also fabulously commercially successful. Good for them.
VIDEO: Yeah, you know what they sound like. So this is gratuitous. The song is "Hey (Oh)"
1 comment:
I'm so glad you like this, too.
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