Monday, June 20, 2016

album review: 'the getaway' by red hot chili peppers

You know, in nearly six hundred reviews, I don't think I've ever talked about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Now, part of that is that they haven't released an album in a couple of years and they're a considerable distance out of their heyday, but on some level, what is there to say? I've yet to find a person who seriously dislikes the band and their genre-pushing blend of alternative rock, rap rock and funk, and while I'd never say they made classic albums, they sure as hell kept up a steady stream of singles that have always been a ton of fun. I always found it a little interesting that they managed to chug through the 80s with very little success before blowing up for a solid two decades and becoming rock staples. And yet with that in mind, while I can definitely say I like this band, I'd never say they were one of my favourites or that we need more Red Hot Chili Peppers material, it's not like their string of classic songs in the 90s and 2000s are going anywhere.

But you can tell in the post-Frusciante years that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are not simply content to rest on their laurels, first putting out a pretty decent record in 2011 with Josh Klinghoffer on guitar. But even that didn't seem like enough, so after a collection of EPs and live albums, they left longtime producer Rick Rubin to try something different for their newest record The Getaway, enlisting Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse. Now I've had mixed experiences with Danger Mouse in recent years - a few good, but most underwhelming - but I had no idea how his style would meld with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who have tended to be a wilder, more colorful group than he'd usually work with. In other words, I was definitely willing to give The Getaway a chance - so what did we get?

Honestly, while I'd be tempted to say, 'It's a new post-Frusciante Chili Peppers record, of course it's good but not great' and call it a day, I'd argue there's a little more going on here than you'd otherwise expect coming from the band. The question comes whether or not it works, with the short answer being yes but with a lot of qualifications. The weird thing is that while I think this album is certainly thought-provoking, it's not for many of the reasons that I suspect most people listen to the Chili Peppers, especially casual fans, so I'm not exactly sure this is easy to recommend.

And the place we need to start is production, because a switch from Rick Rubin to Brian Burton is considerable and definitely shows up on this record. To put it bluntly, Rubin is a much more 'immediate' producer in adding naked muscle and edges, whereas Danger Mouse tends to focus more on grooves and more hollowed, liquid textures in guitars and synth. And on top of that, they also hired on Nigel Godrich - most well-known for working with Radiohead - for the mixing, and man, you can tell, because this album definitely does not have the bite or immediate firepower of previous records, with more pianos and synthesizers balancing or even overtaking the guitars and the funk elements potent but never explosive. And sure, to compensate they add in strings and organ and even a trumpet on 'The Hunter', but it further intensifies a more somber and melancholic mood that doesn't seem to match some of the compositions. Sure, you get cases like the piano fleshing out the melody of 'Dark Necessities', which easily remains one of the best tracks on the album, or the gleaming early-80s-esque synths behind 'Go Robot' or the spacious pseudo-psychedelic textures on 'Encore' or the utterly warped psychedelic funk of 'Dreams Of A Samurai' that builds to a pretty huge chorus, but even there you get the feeling the actual guitar lines don't have the same colour outside the far too few solos.  

Now what's a little more questionable are the choices to blur the guitars deeper into the foggy textures of the mix - again, the tracks feel cohesive and it's probably easier to mask Frusciante's absence by doing so, but what I liked about his guitar work is that it often anchored defiantly distinctive guitar melodies that stuck as great hooks in their own right. And what's frustrating is that this might have been a preemptive measure that didn't need to happen, because most of Josh Klinghoffer's compositions are pretty solid, when his guitars get the space to breathe though them And that's not counting Burton's tonal choices that have been occasionally questionable and remain so here, like the flat gooey tone of the guitar on the hook of 'Goodbye Angels' where the wiry synth has more bite or the ugly compression soaking the mix on 'Sick Love' or the wheedling background textures on the verses of 'Feasting On The Flower'. And what's frustrating is when they try for a more aggressive mix like on 'Detroit', the thin fidelity of the vocal pickup seems like a cheap way to make the song have more edge than it does, which they also try on the blocky and muddy layering on the verses of 'This Ticonderoga' that sounds messy as hell and clashes painfully with the much cleaner hook. It clicked a little better on the heavier punch of 'We Turn Red', but even then the hook drowns the funk edge of the guitar line in a blur of strings and percussion - the acoustic line is fine, but it kind of undercuts the mood on a record that could really use some heavier hooks!

But then again, maybe that was the point, and that takes us to the lyrics and themes. Now full disclosure, I have a limited amount of patience for the batshit non sequiteurs that you tend to expect all over a Red Hot Chili Peppers album, and Anthony Kiedis does have his fair share - I can tolerate the scattershot politics of 'We Turn Red' to a point, but when we get him saying to 'do the avocado', I start finding it hard to take this seriously. And that's always been the tough line the Chili Peppers have tended to walk, between loose off-beat fun and a deeper sense of melancholy, but with this record, the production naturally tilts it into a more somber tone and that's a rougher fit than usual for most of Kiedis' weirder lyrics. And that makes the tone even more confused, especially because for a significant portion of this record this is a breakup album, focusing on the failed relationship between Kiedis and an Australian model who was barely out of her teens. And to be blunt, Kiedis actually manages to get some considerable emotion out of these tracks - I'm not always wild about his delivery, especially on songs like the very clipped 'Feasting On The Flowers', which doesn't at all match the theme focusing on the overdose and death of former Chili Peppers member Hillel Slovak - but when you get songs like 'The Longest Wave' or the title track, the angst is palpable. Hell, it's what redeems the ending tracks of this album, where Kiedis retreats into his own psyche and the disheveled mess of his past and doesn't find anything close to good results, which lends a real edge to the 'tribute' to his father on 'The Hunter' or the breakdown of 'Dreams Of A Samurai'. And yeah, it definitely adds more weight to 'Dark Necessities', a song commenting on how art is often enriched by our darker impulses - the larger problem is that Kiedis cannot commit to a consistent lyrical tone. Take the second-to-last verse on 'Goodbye Angels', where the line is 'Welcome to the party, it's a ball game / Pick up the stick, it's time to get hit with / ayo ayo ayo ayo my bat' - one, that's not how baseball works, and two, I get the sense it's just a dick joke in disguise and that kind of hurts the mood of a breakup song! And sure, out-there sex references have always been a part of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs - I'm willing to excuse the lines about spanking the robot on 'Go Robot' for at least having a bit more context, believe it or not - but when the production isn't as colourful and the lyrical subject matter trends darker, they just feel out of place. And speaking of out-of-place, I get the loose thematic connection to the faded decay of 'Detroit', but stuffing it full of go-nowhere Detroit references definitely doesn't help the song hold together!

But to summarize, The Getaway is a weird but pretty good entry in the Red Hot Chili Peppers catalog, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to embrace it completely. It's certainly one of their more experimental projects while maintaining the sound and style, but not many of those experiments drive big returns, and it leads to many songs not really coming together as well as they should. I'm genuinely curious how well Chili Peppers fans will react to the production and content choices behind this record, but as it is, I'm feeling a very strong 6/10 and a tentative recommendation. If you're a casual Chili Peppers fan and you're curious, it's a worth a listen, but I would hesitate to put it among their best. Otherwise, I'd check out their 90s and 2000s work before this album, but if you're interested in the more melancholic side of the band... I guess it's worth a listen, so check it out.

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