Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium

66%
The Chili Peppers are back after a 4 year (damn, it's been that long?) hiatus. The band has been creating a funk-metal/alternative rock/rap/the kitchen sink fusion for quite a bit, and quite successfully so (both artistically and commercially). After their commercial success, perhaps they feel as though that they are at the top of their game and can't go wrong, and the ambition here is clear: it's a concept double album.

The first disc ("Jupiter") opens up with the big single: "Dani California", which has an addmittedly cool video where frontman Anthony Kiedis dresses up as Prince and then then they all dress up as the Sex Pistols and Nirvana and what have you. However, the actual song is rather unremarkable - not bad, but it's the expected Chili Peppers sound. It's also the millionth song dedicated to their home state. It seems that at the point in which they would want to step out of their mold, they go right back to it - not to mention it sounds suspiciously close to Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance".

Guitarist John Frusicante gets more than a few solos his way and bassist Michael "Flea" Balzary also gets a few opportunities to to showcase his talents, and both artists for the most part deliver. Drummer Chad Smith performs well enough and Kiedis does the rapping/singing thing of his as expected, but it's nothing special.

Producer Rick Rubin sounds exactly what a big-name producer shouldn't sound like: undistinctive. The sound he gives the Peppers is rather flat - not bad, just unremarkable.

Slow songs like the title track just drag - that song in particular is more than 5 minutes long. It's pop-rock sound is broken up by it's true-to-roots funk metal songs like "Hump de Bump" - a decent enough P-Funk-inspired rocker but nothing they haven't done better before (the chorus is pretty bad too). However, Flea has a tendency to shine on these tracks.

"She's Only 18" is Kiedis's (46) ode to his girlfriend, 18 at the time the song was written. A little creepy much? Ah fuck, maybe it's just me. "Slow Cheetah" is another pop-rock acoustic type song, with a rather retarded song title which leads to a rather retarded chorus. "Strip My Mind" is another long slow song that could be skipped. "Especially in Michigan" is a decent rocker with a guest shot from Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.

"Warlocks" is a pretty good funk-rock song especially due to the clavinet work from Billy Preston (R.I.P.), but the vocals get a little irritating, though thankfully it's short of three and a half minutes. The first CD cocludes with "Hey" another long (over 5 and a half minutes long) slow track that just comes off as boring.

And so we reach disc 2, "Mars". The opener, "Desecration Smile", is a slow 5-minute long song but it's the best one on here. "Tell Me Baby" opens up like it's another slow song but becomes another funk-rock song (with a nice bassline but otherwise irritating.)

"21st Century" is one of the better songs on here, with some nice work from Flea and Frusicante, although the lyrics could use some work.

The album maintains it's later-day RHCP sound of slow pop-rock mixed with a few rockers and some earlier-day funk-metal. When they try to reach out, it's actually rather uninteresting ("If") or a mess (the weird spoken word bit on "Death of a Martian")

"So Much I" has an exciting punk/funk kind of sound that the album is short on. The band goes on a long (more than 6 minutes) rocker with "Turn It Again" which is pretty good if a little too long. "Death" of a Martian" ends the album with a semi spoken word bit with guitar soloing going around.

Finally, after 28 tracks spanning over 2 hours, the double album is over. Flea is pretty much excellent throughout, John Frusicante is a bit hit-or-miss but good overall, Chad Smith is versatile and solid but not spectacular, and Anthony Keidis does a comptent if unispiring job on vocals.

It's really not much of a concept album, it's only vaguely so. But it's definitely a double album in that it's way too long and way too average for anybody but hardcore fans to like. There is no truly bad song in here, but there is no truly good song in here either. The repetitive themes, production, guitar tones, and style (which is kind of the same the Chili Peppers have been pushing for the past however many years) just addds to this. They fuse earlier days of the Chili Peppers, but they don't do them any better nor in any new way. It's listenable, and you won't hate it, but at the end of the day, it all seems rather unnecessary.

- Luis