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spotlight! a milder Chili Pepper
By Adam Goldstein
goldstea@mscd.edu

The Red Hot Chili Peppers Stadium Arcadium (Warner Bros., 2006)

Indulging my inner ninth-grader, I snatched up the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers release, Stadium Arcadium, expecting a nostalgic aural journey that would transport me back to more innocent years.

Alas, Anthony Kiedis’ brash vocals, Flea’s pounding bass, John Frusciante’s plaintive guitar lines and Chad Smith’s thundering beats did not inspire the awe, the admiration or the resounding emotion they did when I was 14.

It is not entirely for nostalgia that Arcadium falls short; 2002’s By the Way marked a much bigger departure and a much more significant watershed for the band than the latest release.

The album is a sprawling effort to ease into musical middle age with maturity while retaining a healthy dose of insouciance. The band makes an admirable effort to cram all of their most diverse and deepest efforts into the space of these two discs. It seems the Peppers have fallen short in their earnest attempt to create their masterpiece, their own “white album.”

The results are mixed. The double album boasts an equal amount of hits and misses, falling short of the band’s most memorable mixtures of tender balladry and hard, in-your-face funk. Still, the album is impressive in its sheer scope and ambition. The 28 tracks run the gamut of the Peppers’ sounds and abilities, skipping from the meditative to the bawdy with hardly a pause.

Songs like “Hey” and “If” carry the Pepper’s trademark lilt that is, in part, responsible for some of their most durable radio hits. Frusciante’s guitar retains its poetic tone and cadence, as Kiedis’ words contain an unlikely amount of sensitivity and depth. Similarly, rousing and brash tunes like “Tell Me Baby” and “Dani California” spotlight Flea’s unbridled bass slaps and Smith’s cacophonous rhythms a la “Give It Away” and “I Like Dirt.”

All the familiar elements are in place here, but the execution somehow falls short. Stadium Arcadium certainly has its moments of familiar funk and affecting depth, but there is no breathtaking innovation or freshness

I suppose I can still listen to it when I ditch seventh period Latin class to have a smoke behind the arts building. Adults are so lame.