RHCP announce
New album
For 1st April !!

https://pitchfork.com/news/red-hot-chili-peppers-announce-new-album-unlimited-love-share-new-song-black-summer-listen/

Oooooooh!  I can't wait not to listen to that!

Don't think I've heard a thing by them since Blood Sugar Sex Magick, which was a great album. There's something that I hear by them fairly often in the supermarket but I tune it out. Zero interest in anything new but I might hear something in the supermarket I guess.

I hated that album that came out in the early noughties, might have been their last one.

Other than that I'm ok with them. They have a few great tracks.

Nah, Californication was a significant change in sound. There’s barely anything on there that could be described as funk.

Scar Tissue is the only good song on that album, as far as I’m concerned. But it is a very good song.

They were fucking atrocious at Leeds.

They can all play, but they're still shite.

Number one in Norway.

I've had a couple of days to listen to the Black Country: New Road album - "Ants From Up There".  Having been a little bit snotty about it at first, I've now done an almost complete U-turn, and think it's a minor masterpiece.  Which makes it all the more frustrating that they won't be continuing in their current form.

If "For the First Time" largely contained songs which exploited the tension between insecurity and swagger, the new album forgoes any pretence, and instead is a man falling apart, beautifully, for an hour. 

It's an old fashioned album - everything hangs together as a whole, songs referencing each other, motifs - both lyrical and musical - building throughout.  The image of Concorde, for instance, is recurrent throughout (as well as presumably being nodded to by the title) - a sense of someone or something that is too fast, too dramatic and too unobtainable. An aspiration both unreachable and doomed.  Similarly, there's "the clamp" ever tighter, and never good.  Somehow Billy Eilish (and a not quite explicitly referenced Charli XCX) gets in there too.  The lyrics will be poured over by people in bedrooms for quite some time to come, I suspect.

Musically, it's slower, more accessible, but still happy to reach for a discordant trumpet, or full fledged freak out when needs require it. There's discipline in the chaos. Some songs seem to take an eternity to start, and will suddenly lurch off in unexpected directions half way through.  The final 3 tracks take up the best part of 30 minutes alone, but manage not to feel like it.

In terms of stand outs, I guess it depends what you're looking for. "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade" is probably the closest they get to a straight forward indie pop song - even if it is 7 minutes long - and it's interesting that they didn't choose to release it as a single, given that it feels the obvious candidate.  The song that triggered my initial sniffiness on release - Concorde - has revealed itself over time to be a magnificently constructed beast, snippets of it sneaking up on me fro0m time to time, nicely embedded into my brain somewhere.

It's all damn good though - from the meet-the-band staccato of "Chaos Space Machine" through to the closing epic of "Basketball Shoes", a kind of summation of all that's come before, with the closing chant: "All I've been forms the drone, we sing the rest. Oh, your generous loan to me, the crippling interest" suggesting that, yeah, he can't do this any more.  

It's good stuff, though it takes a little time to get properly under your skin.

Given that there will, in all likelihood, never be a chance to see it live, here's the album made up from live performances to give some idea...

Have now listened to it and I agree, it's amazing. It's so unlike the first album, which I love, and like you I wasn't that keen on it not being as obviously epic and freaky as the debut. But it's just sheer class from beginning to end and you can, unfortunately, hear the genuine anguish and torment in Isaac's voice.

I'm interested to see where they go next though, because their plan to try and be a band of equals with no focal point front man and a range of voices is an intriguing approach.

After several years, I've been revisiting I Am Kloot - Sky At Night.

I always loved it, but I think time has been even kinder - It may have even become one of my top ten.  Absolute masterpiece.

x

That new Liam Gallagher song is probably the best thing him or his brother have done for about 20 years.

x

MyNamesKrisG wrote:

After several years, I've been revisiting I Am Kloot - Sky At Night. I always loved it, but I think time has been even kinder - It may have even become one of my top ten.  Absolute masterpiece. x

Sky at Night is great.  I have very fond memories, not just of seeing them perform it, but of kayaking in the middle of nowhere in Canada with my daughters, all of us singing the album pretty much from beginning to end, with no-one to hear us but the sky.  (And the bears)

However I Am Kloot is their best as far as I'm concerned, for the very simple reason that I wrote the official blurb for it on their website. (There was a competition to writer new liner notes for the re-releases.  Except I don't think they ever actually did re-release it - certainly not with my words.  But it's on the site, so that'll do me.).

My god, that closing track on the BCNW album is stunning - might be over if the best things they've ever done.