So it turns out the special sauce in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ success is not the half-rapped vocals of frontman Anthony Kiedis, or Flea’s taut basslines, but the more free-flowing guitar work of John Frusciante. A few years younger than his bandmates, Frusciante has always seemed more interested in pursuing his muse than touring the arenas and was last seen producing guitar-free dance music on a solo drum and bass album named after his dead cat. He has yo-yo-ed in and out of the group since 1989 but always been there for the biggest albums, including Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991 and Californication in 1999.
Poor sacked Josh Klinghoffer’s work on the last two releases saw sales figures sink, but Frusciante’s reappearance here, his first time on lead guitar with the band since Stadium Arcadium in 2006, seems such a guarantee of a popularity boost that a global stadium tour is already booked. They’ll play two nights at the Olympic Stadium in late June, their biggest London gigs in 18 years.
Long-term producer Rick Rubin also returns after skipping the last album, when Danger Mouse took over, so everything is in its right place. The only thing that might scare the faithful is the odd sonic experiment. There’s a jazzy cascade of horns at the end of Aquatic Mouth Dance, a song that also contains some of Kiedis’s more peculiar lyrics (“Aquatic mouth dance is waiting for you,” apparently) and Bastards of Light, which begins with icy synths, moves onto acoustic guitar strums and winds up with hard rock and growled vocals, is a right mess.
Kiedis’s blocked nose singing and Flea’s bass are perpetually wound tight, like straining tendons, so Frusciante’s fluid playing works brilliantly as a necessary counterpart. He lets his guitar roam freely across the unhurried funk of It’s Only Natural and wraps up Here Ever After with an acrobatic solo. In the middle of the otherwise calm and stately The Great Apes, he does everything short of setting his instrument alight.
The raw, grungey These Are the Ways stands out by changing the feel, but there probably isn’t a song here that will impact on the masses with the force of earlier hits such as Under the Bridge and By the Way. Even so, those who have grown up with this band will have few reservations about welcoming its return in its strongest line-up.
