Stadium Arcadium

About

The ninth album from the Red Hot Chili Pepper, 2006’s <i>Stadium Arcadium</i>, is a massive buffet featuring everything the band does well—a two-hour, four-LP victory lap from one of the biggest bands in the land. After nearly 25 years of vacillating between being madcap funk-punker, art-metal misfit, tender modern-rock balladeer, and psychedelically charged pop icon, the Red Hot Chili Peppers finally just threw it all into the stew and emerged with their first No. 1 album. With 28 tracks run that run the gamut from sensitive to sleazy, <i>Stadium Arcadium</i> is an embarrassment of riches for longtime Peppers fan. But there’s something here for every fan, no matter when they joined the Rockinfreakapotamus hive. Recorded at the same Laurel Canyon mansion where the group birthed its 1991 smash <i>Blood Sugar Sex Magik</i>, the 28 songs on <i>Stadium Arcadium</i> together play like a career-spanning anthology, even though it’s all new material. The Peppers had spent 1999’s <i>Californication</i> and 2002’s <i>By the Way</i> surfing the airwaves with modern-rock anthems that prioritized melody over rump-shaking. But <i>Stadium Arcadium</i> songs like the horn-soaked “Hump de Bump,” the Funkadelic-tinged “She’s Only 18,” and the cartoony “Storm in a Teacup” (with its response call of “Whoop-tay-whoop-tay-get-ta-galla-goop-tay”) could have been spawned from the 1985 <i>Freaky Styley</i> sessions with George Clinton. Meanwhile, “Charlie” and “Warlocks”—the latter of which features legendary soul sideman Billy Preston on clavinet—sound like the taut grooves of the <i>Blood Sugar</i> era. And were it not for John Frusciante’s trademark harmonie, the S&M-metal crunch of “Torture Me” and “Readymade” could have been outtakes from 1995’s chugging <i>One Hot Minute</i>. .

via Apple Music

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