John Frusciante - To Record Only Water for Ten Days (2001)

1) Going Inside; 2) Someone's; 3) The First Season; 4) Wind Up Space; 5) Away & Anywhere; 6) Remain; 7) Fallout; 8) Ramparts; 9) With No One; 10) Murderers; 11) Invisible Movement; 12) Representing; 13) In Rime; 14) Saturation; 15) Moments Have You

Through a personal and creative rebirth and despite a limited tool set, Frusciante gives his solo career a proper start by way of a resonant, personal burst of inspiration.

Key tracks: "Going Inside", "Invisible Movement", "Moments Have You"

John Frusciante experienced a resurrection in the late 90s, almost practically. He picked himself up (with a big help from his friends) from the literal brink of death, got himself cleaned up from the heavy amount of drugs his life had revolved around for much of the 1990s and brought himself back into shape (including replacing his entire set of teeth), effectively starting a brand new life from scratch. Comparing Frusciante before and after his rehab is akin to dealing with two entirely different people, so radically he changed not only his lifestyle but the way he approached music. His melody-heavy, layered signature style of playing guitar, appreciation of space between notes and a new-found fascination for intricate arrangements not only lead Red Hot Chili Peppers for their second wind that codified Frusciante as their definitive guitarist for the history books, but they paved the way for a near endless stream of creativity. During the first decade of the 2000s Frusciante was always, endlessly working whether with his band, by himself or through other side projects, often at the same time - he released more music during those ten years than a lot artists do during their whole career. 

To Record Only Water for Ten Days is an appropriate way to start that path. Despite its major label release (courtesy of Warner trying to ride on the coattails of Californication's recent success), it sounds entirely homespun, something you'd be more likely to find online than in the record store. The album's building blocks consist of only Frusciante's singing, his guitar, a drum machine and some keyboard textures, all with a decidedly lo-fi production that reveal the album's origins: home demos, backstage takes and other strictly personal recordings made quickly and entirely through his own two hands. They sound like they're primarily for Frusciante himself, like demos that got a little bit of polish and mastering before getting pushed through the door. They were a way for Frusciante keep creating while he was touring the world with the Chili Peppers, simply because he needed to make new music all the time. 

But that's not the whole picture. Despite its rough-around-the-edges presentation, To Record Only Water is emblematic of Frusciante's rejuvenation. With the relatively limited instrumentation, the production leaves a lot of room for its few elements to showcase themselves; with little else to distract, you pick up on the details more easily. The guitar playing is front and center musically, a rhythmic acoustic strum in lieu of bass backing up the electric, excitedly presenting the new signature style: numerous rich melodic and rhythmic patterns weaved in-between each riff's respective gaps. At best of times, like with the instrumental "Ramparts", the amount of various guitar parts on top of each other becomes almost overwhelming, but they're all kept neatly in line, each riff showing a clear individual purpose rather than repeating the same patterns. 



Even more noticeably, there's Frusciante's voice. Cleaning up has not only done wonders to his singing in general, but audibly boosted his own confidence as a vocalist. Already established as a powerful tool in the Chili Peppers arsenal with his increased backing vocal role on Californication, on To Record Only Waterhis bellowing voice gets the center spot it arguably deserves. It's a voice full of charisma, his past pains and new lust for life resonating throughout, and he sings like a man who's overjoyed to be able to sing once more to begin with. The lyrics are perhaps abstract to a fault but Frusciante sells them: he finds the emotional hooking points in the the surreal, imagery-heavy words, and together with the sound and production they make for an album that's well within its own world, singularly focused around its songwriter's whims. 

The songs themselves are roughly split between vignette-like pieces that cosily wrap themselves up in couple of minutes or under, and the more fully-realised songs. In either case, Frusciante doesn't particularly abide between strict verse-chorus-verse structures. They're present, but not particularly adamantly so; you could argue for a lot of these songs that they're in their core free-form structures to suit Frusciante's rambling lyrical patterns, but ones where he switches between a couple of key melodies for convenience when it suits his whim. Whichever approach he takes, he does something memorable with it. The tuneless excursions of his first two solo albums are a distant memory: here, despite the limited array of sounds and the inconsistent structures, Frusciante always make a strong case for his songwriting. A lot of the longer songs in particular shine in this regard, for obvious reasons. "Going Inside" is a roaring and soaring anthem that's not just an album opener but an introduction to Frusciante's new life in general, "Away & Anywhere" is a few short tweaks away from being a gigantic rock anthem as it explodes into life in its wordless choruses, and "Moments Have You" is a perfect closer in how it injects the optimism of the whole project into music so perfectly, elevating its straightforward nature into what sounds like a great big smile at the end of the album. The shorter songs are no slackers either, and the rush of energy of "Sometimes", dream-like "Wind Up Space" and killer melody of "Invisible Movement" (which is one of the few shorter songs that gets a chance to grow in scope as it progresses) are just as essential. 

To Record Only Water is similarly essential - not just for the listener, but you can tell it was important for Frusciante himself, a way to fully twist open the creativity that he had started to tap into. As a whole, the album is nearly life-affirmingly happy, though not obviously so: it has its slightly more melancholy cuts here and there ("Fallout", the particularly gorgeous "The First Season"), after all. But there's a beaming optimism to Frusciante himself, present in every inspired arrangement, earworm vocal melody and shimmering riff. There's a certain kind of purity to its limited arsenal of sounds and how Frusciante is clearly behind each and every one of them. In the most positive way, it's an album that sounds like it was intended primarily for its creator - it's simply a wonderful coincidence that it's a fantastic listen for other people as well. It's a heartfelt and inspiring love letter to life, dictated through a layer of very personal kind vagueness in form and structure but performed with directness and earnestness. The albums that followed would find ways to emphasise or expand upon a variety of the positives that are found here, but To Record Only Water still feels like the most essential for Frusciante, centered entirely around his own gut feeling and how he channels it into the songs.

Rating: 9/10