When John Frusciante returned to Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2019, new music was high on the agenda. They had planned to enter the studio in 2020, but were delayed by the global Covid pandemic. Time was instead spent on penning songs and exchanging musical ideas remotely. This was more fruitful than they had imagined. When they finally got together in Rick Rubin’s studio, it turned out that they had more than 100 new songs to pick from.
The first collection of songs from these sessions was released with the title Unlimited Love on 1 April 2022. It was a clear indication of the luxury problem they had when it came to picking material. The CD was filled to capacity, featuring 17 new songs of high quality. The sessions had indeed been very fruitful.
The story could have ended there. But wait, there’s more!
Just a few months later, the band announced that they had even more material to offer. During the album session they had kept recording and ended up with an abundance of material – much more than they’d previously let on. In fact, they had enough songs for an entire follow-up album, which would be released later in the year.
Wait, what? This was quite the surprise, but true to their word, Return of the Dream Canteen was released on 14 October. Like its predecessor, the CD is filled to capacity, also containing 17 new songs of high quality.
At this point I would not be surprised to hear of a third album with a further 17 songs to be announced soon. Seriously, though: this is a tremendous achievement for the band. In effect, they have delivered two double albums of music in 2022. This is the most new music the band has presented in a single year yet, slightly beating out 2006 which saw the release of Stadium Arcadium – a double album with 2×12 new songs. It’s almost like they are making up for lost time, delivering the amount of music we might have gotten from a Frusciante-led RHCP if he had never left the band in 2009.
The obvious question is whether there is a difference to the two albums. Which is the better one? Are they stylistically different, each focusing on songs of a specific mood or type?
My initial take is that those considerations don’t seem to play a part here. It’s like side A and side B of a (very long) album where everything is recorded interchangeably. The songs across these albums are clearly cut from the same cloth.
I have seen people say that they didn’t like one of the albums that much, but the other one was much more to their liking. As the albums are largely similar, there really shouldn’t be a huge difference between how they are received. Possibly some listeners had a more receptive mindset for a new RHCP album when one of them were released than the other. The difference between the albums lead singles might also colour how each album is viewed.
The lead singles from each album are indeed somewhat different, which can go some way towards shaping our initial thoughts on each album differently. Unlimited Love had Black Summer, a sorrowful and melancholic take on summer songs, while Dream Canteen has Tippa My Tongue – a much more funky song which struts around and plays it cool. When the lead singles are so different they will obviously also colour people’s perceptions of the albums differently, even though their overall styles are very much closer than these singles indicate.
Tippa My Tongue is definitely one of the most playful songs on Dream Canteen and a very good single choice. I was definitely excited to hear it, and it might be the one song on both of the new albums that harkens the most back to how the Peppers used to sound 30 years ago. This track would not have been out of place on Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Kiedis’ vocal delivery feels a bit sharper here, throwing words out with some of that old attitude. The funk machinery is similarly on point, with the drums, bass, and guitar having a lovely percussive interplay with Kiedis delivering words perfectly on top. This is an amazing track, one of the best from either album, and a perfect opener. It does set a high bar that a lot of the album struggles to live up to, similar to what Black Summer did on Unlimited Love.
Peace And Love is a slinky track, a groovy ballad, mostly thanks to the bass groove, with guitars used as spice and Kiedis crooning on top. It’s got the ambience of a lazy summer day, which – much like the material on companion album Unlimited Love – is a permeating feeling. It is wistful yet uplifting.
Even a song like Reach Out, which is significantly more explosive with a very heavy riff and hammering rhythm when the chorus hits, can’t quite shake that relaxed, groovy feeling with it in spite of its hammering riff. It’s a nice combination and the song has tremendous dynamics, leaving no doubt to the overall mindset of the band at the time. They are at times very experimental, yet confident (and experienced) enough not to force anything.
Eddie is an interesting song in that it is a tribute to a certain well-known guitar player who went by that name. The track really does not sound much like Van Halen at all, even to the point that they borrow from themselves (the intro is very similar to the iconic intro to their own track By the Way), although the guitar solo finds Frusciante very much emulating Edward Van Halen, tapping, bending and soloing very much in the style of a guitar player that all of them looked up to.
Fake As Fu@k is an album highlight, also mined from a classic RHCP tradition. It starts rather tenderly with Kiedis describing a bleak reality. He sings, “Tuesday morning comes along / I read the news, it’s all gone wrong / The facts of life have left too soon / The serving up of doom and gloom / Never gonna leave my room.” A large dose of stark reality on a bed of indie-inspired giddy joy, with Frusciante in particular offering a lovely mix of jangly and virtuoso guitars. Towards the end, Flea leads the charge as a horn section adds percussive rhythm patterns to the usual great effect.
Bella is another vintage funk-strutter which has at least one leg in the band’s early 1990s style. The pace and overall feel is more in tune with their current energy though, which means it’s slow-paced and relaxed, yet forward-leaning and very much on point. Roulette is an extension of this, yet different, as it adds a cool jazzy-styled funk to proceedings. The song has a lot of dynamics as well as a sense of urgency few other songs on offer have. It grows along the way, yet pulls back for certain sections. It is a definite grower.
The experimentation continues on the electro-inspired My Cigarette, an 1980s-inspired pop ode to smoking. I can’t recall the band ever having sounded quite like this before, and there is something weirdly pleasing about the track. The song has some of the most absurd lyrics I’ve seen the band serve up (which is saying something), but is clear about how he feels about his cigarette: “My sweetness / It’s not weakness” and “Don’t know how happy that a person can get”. Fiittingly, the song has a jazzy outro suitable to the type of noir cafés where one can sit and smoke in peace.
Shoot Me A Smile is a wonderful vintage-sounding pop track. The guitars are irresistibly jangly and melodic, making me think of 1960s-style bands like The Byrds and even early folk-rock bands like Fairport Convention. Even Kiedis has an irresistible melodic vocal line here, with some lovely backing vocal arrangements popping up here and there. The track itself is upbeat and breaks out from the established style a bit. This is a quality track through and through, and easily one of my very favourites on the album!
The band has not forgotten who they are, though. Afterlife sees the band flex their collective muscles again with a quality RHCP rocker. Handful is more measured, melodic, and even slightly jazzy (listen to those Chad rhythms!).
The Drummer was released as the second (and as of now, the last) single from the album on 14 October 2022. It is an interesting choice, with a new-wave keyboard sound largely defining the fast-paced track. Some have called it out as echoing a-ha’s Take On Me. While I wouldn’t have thought of that personally, I can hear where it comes from. Personally I see the track as refreshingly flamboyant, something you wouldn’t have expected the band to do. I imagine this is a track fans will either love or hate, so from that perspective it is a bold single.
Bag of Grins brings more of an uneasy ambience. The track builds a quiet sense of urgency, and contains some explosive sections where the band dive into a full band sound before retreating into the quieter unease. The mood that is built is only fitting for a song where Kiedis looks at what it might be like to finally pass over to the other side. Yep, we are talking about dying. He has had some close brushed with death in his younger years due to the lifestyle he led, which also make it into the lyrics: “In my day I could hear them say / Mr. K it was awfully close / Now we take that bow you know/ Cuz it’s time to meet your ghost”. Definitely a bit of a different offering, yet again.
I will admit I find it hard to take a song titles La La La La La La La La seriously, and as I’m steeling myself for a meaningless moment of over-the-top pop nonsensicalness, I actually get the complete opposite. The track is pensive, reflective, heartfelt and earnest. Kiedis sings over a slow and sad piano that meets a saxophone halfway, opening his heart to someone. Well, in his own way: “I wanna spend my life with you / Mess around with things you do / We could start a family feud / Laugh so hard they’ll think we’re rude”. A lovely moment at this point in the album.
The next two tracks take us back to our regularly scheduled type of programming. Copperbelly and Carry Me Home stick close to the established sound of RHCP as of 2022. They are laidback rockers, overall relaxed with moments of intensity such as the odd guitar solo or more intensely played bridge. Copperbelly contains a nice 1960s psychedelic underpinning, which I note they have featured on a fair few songs on the album at this point, while Carry Me Home is as bluesy as the band ever gets on either of the new albums, with the band hitting a cool blues groove at time as Frusciante plays a mean, dirty lead break.
It all ends with In the Snow. It is the album’s longest track at 5:55, meaning that it can take the time to properly set itself up and establish itself through a careful yet solid build. The results are outstanding, and somewhat surprising.
This is yet another track that harks back to an early 1980s electro-era track. A dreamy, pensive, melodic beginning starts snaring us in, with the lyrics taking a philosophic view on life and partnerships. “My mates have all gone married now / Off living in a kindred cloud/ I’m not that kind.” The song stays on the path it has built musically, does not diverge or change its nature, but spins its dreamy web around the lyrics. Eventually it is the vocals who break out, as Kiedis breaks out into rapid abstract free-form beat poetry in the latter part of the song. It ends as it has gone one – quietly and with grace, the final sung lyric perhaps adding a semblance of hope for the narrator: “The ball is clearly in my court / And I am happy to report / It’s moving slow”.
Return of the Dream Canteen is very much an album done on the band’s own terms. When news of Frusciante’s return broke, it was expected that they would live up to every classic track they had ever created. Instead, they have lived up to themselves as musicians. As a collective, the pairing of these four people as a collective lead to inspiring moments, and they are not afraid of following their ideas wherever they take them.
There is no doubt that the band have taken risks here, breaking new ground and engaging in the world around them. The band have never been one for brevity though, and this album is a mouthful. Should it have been shorter? Possibly, but which tracks should go? There is no clear handful of obviously weaker tracks to prune here. Personally, I’m not sure that less is more in circumstances as this. I think more is more, and many will no doubt curate their own playlists from Unlimited Love and Dream Canteen.
So, how many additional songs did the band record with Rick Rubin at Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu? Could there be a third 17-track extravaganza from these sessions in our future? That would really be something. I wouldn’t dare to bet against it.
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