critically acclaimed

Red Hot Chili Peppers- Staduim Arcadium

and here i am back again with more music reviews. today's focus is on the huge double album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. i wasn't the hugest Peppers fan until Californication. i'm a little too young to enjoy anything before BloodSugarSexMagik and they haven't had a career until recently. yet their last album By the Way was one of my staples before my trek into the college life back in the day. therefore i was also quite excited about this album before it came out.

first off this album is enornomous. 28 tracks is a lot to absorb into one listening session for this ADD riddled brain of mine. therefore in many listenings in the car i tried to absorb the albums qualities to see what the overall feel was for this type of work. first impressions it is pretty good. simply put i know but i like it. it is a mix of Californication and By the Way and takes a lot of the good things from both albums and tries to meld them together. Kiedis has such a sweet voice on this mostly mid tempo project. a lot of tracks are virtually throwaways but make sense in the sequence of the two discs.

so then if i don't mind the material how can i fairly rate or pick out stand out tracks for everyone to download and use. the two tracks that i keep coming back to are "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "21st Century." the latter is a track that tries to capture the magik of old funky peppers but still isn't nearly as cool as those days were but it is still a track that makes you pay attention amongst the wealth of ideas.

all in all it is a very mature album and i think puts this band one more step towards legitimately being one of the most important bands in music history. the combinations that all the musicians bring to the table make everything flow and work.

yet i don't like the unbelievable mass this album holds. like i mentioned before a lot of tracks are good but you still feel like they are sort of throwaway or backgroundish type feelings. my biggest complaint is the lyrics which i think are not as good as past albums. not saying their bad but not outstanding and with the unbelievable musicianship portrayed by the other members it merely detracts from some of the project.

pick it up though because this is a band that is going to matter many years down the road and new musicians need bands like this one. pick and choose the tracks you like and forget some of the others but it isn't all bad. and now i'm done.

posted by critically acclaimed @ 12:51 AM