Return of the spice boys

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Warner Bros. Records

Perhaps only U2 and Aerosmith can claim that they have enough staying power to go head-to-head with the youngest and hottest music artists of today. Perhaps they can boast that their album sales continue to skyrocket because of loyal fans, even though cynics have called rock groups "on the outs." Perhaps they can be labeled as the standards and veterans of successful bands in music history. Perhaps, but you’ll certainly have to add the Red Hot Chili Peppers into the mix.

The group’s latest offer, "By The Way" (no pun intended), is a far cry from their days of manic and funk rap metal songs, even going as crazy as to writing pieces reminiscent of the 3 Bs: The Beach Boys, the Beatles, and yes, Burt Bacharach. Can you believe it at all? I mean the Peppers doing Brian Wilson and company harmonies? It’s almost laughable. Almost but not quite.

The new record is endearing in its simplest form — with the group deciding to alienate itself from their previous flirtations of unbreakable and stone-faced tracks. I guess it must be the different guitarists they hire with their ever-changing styles, respectively, but singer Anthony Kiedis has proven time and again that the band is capable of gathering disconnected sounds and ideas from all over the map. And later, putting it into something that’s cohesive, bold, and despite its mongrel origins, couldn’t come from anyone else but them.

The title track is a humdinger of a song, combining enigmatic bass lines and driven guitar riffs that mesh surprisingly well with Kiedis' patented vocals. And the video, which is a hilarious ditty, is already as overplayed in MTV as Ronan Keating’s crappy number. Wonderful. Universally Speaking, which I thought should have been the next single, gives the listener a taste of how the band would sound if they played Beatle tunes. Atmospheric psychedelia wraps the rhythm and catchy refrains of the song, and if they gave more time and effort to record this particular number, it could have been a mini-classic.

If there is a downside to such a lovely outing, it’s that they have too many songs or fillers (16) in the CD. Several could have easily been booted out (one track sounds like a bad Oasis song) and shrunk this into a concrete 12-gem record. This Is The Place, Dosed, Don’t Forget Me, The Zephyr Song, Can’t Stop, and I Could Die For You are the rest of the tracks on the first section of the album. And although none resemble a Chili Pepper classic, all are nice changes of phase and almost an afterthought and lightweight continuation from songs off the hugely successful "Californication" record.

Sub-par fillers like Midnight and Throw Away Your Television opens the second half of the show, but Cabron follows them — a Latin influenced jingle with a hint of rockabilly tip-offs. Not neatly accomplished, but it offers a glimpse of the diverse talent the group has. This is also showcased in the ska-reggae maker On Mercury, in which Kiedis tries to highlight it with an almost Jamaican accent. But it is on the track Tear that gives the listener another standard to enjoy — almost a Beach Boys cut with a cute piano jive and a string adlib. Certainly one of the strongest numbers on the album.

Musically, the Peppers actually sound and don’t sound like themselves (at least not like "BloodSugarSexMagik"). Except for a few songs with memorable hints of Flea’s energetic bass swirls, the guitar arrangements, string quartets, and sometimes Brit-pop nature of the record is a first for the band. The drumming, as always, is exceptionally good, but the overall nature of the record is a lot different when compared to earlier Chili Pepper music. I’m not trying to make it sound as a bad thing because this is hastily becoming my favorite album of theirs. Besides, they made sure that they’ve delved into a more mellow and cleaner hum without leaving themselves musically. He he, am I becoming too technical and refuting?

I was never the biggest Chili Pepper fan but I usually buy what they put out anyway. And "By The Way" is different and secure in effect. It is endlessly surprising and often engaging. And while some rock heads may be a little disappointed with the lack of "heavier stuff," I’m glad the band decided to move away from Under The Bridge and the genre’s stultifying repetitions. And although they’ve never really been consistent in styles in the first place, this is indeed a transition to a blissful change.

Rating: 8/10

(Author’s note: Some album information taken from the Internet)

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Comments are welcome at reuben_matthew@ hotmail.com. By the way, I apologize again (what’s new?) for the lateness of my replies, but I'll get to all of them.