1) Before the Beginning; 2) Song to the Siren; 3) Unreachable; 4) God; 5) Dark/Light; 6) Heaven; 7) Enough of Me; 8) Central; 9) One More of Me; 10) After the Ending
A cohesive tracklist, an expanded studio palette and a concept to tie it all together - Frusciante expands his boundaries again as a culmination of his past decade of solo records.
Key tracks: "Song to the Siren", "Unreachable", "Central"
The last time Frusciante was releasing music under his own name, it was a show-off of inspiration: several albums worth of music all recorded in a handful of binge sessions and later assorted into a variety of records, all released within the space of twelve months. This was then followed up a few years later by the release of Stadium Arcadium with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a scattershot double album which was another result of vastly fruitful recording sessions where no one nixed any song stem that someone thought up. You could imagine that The Empyrean began as an intentional counterpoint for all of that, just to switch things up. It's only ten songs, all of which were designed from the beginning to be firmly together: an album designed as an album first and foremost, with little extra material beyond what was meant to be within it in the first place.
The Empyrean is a concept album but as usual for Frusciante, the lyrics are fairly oblique and more interested in imagery than a solid narrative; so, unless you go actively digging for it the actual story is fairly hard to track and there's a degree of that being intentional. It's meant to be a metaphysical narrative of sorts of an artist dying (literally or metaphorically), traveling through afterlife, confronting God and his own soul, and finding meaning in the universe through art... or something along those lines. When asked, even Frusciante's own explanations have been full of words like "probably" and "maybe", and it's obvious it was never meant to be a clear story as much as it is a framework for the music. In fact, beyond the obvious connections in the song titles nudging towards a greater concept it might not even be that obvious that this is a concept album. But how that concept manifests itself more concretely is in the music itself: the way it's arranged, the way the album flows, the little links or shared melodies across the songs. It's very obvious that a great amount of time has been spent on how the actual album progresses, far more than on any Frusciante album before. Even if you can't find a story in the words, it's obviously in the music.
I want to in particular geek out about the opening trio here: a brilliant showcase of sustaining a mood and building up a resolution across several tracks, with the most patient opening Frusciante has ever featured across his records. Normally his albums open up with their respective signature cuts that introduce the chosen sound with the most instant melodies of the record; instead, "Before the Beginning" is a nine-minute slow-burner instrumental, mainly featuring Frusciante expanding on a relatively simple solo melody with his guitar atop a simple, steady drum beat. It's little more than an intro that could have probably been several minutes shorter, but its long lead-in is a scene-setter for the full album, a lead-in for the listener to sink into. The Tim Buckley cover "Song to the Siren" is a gentle continuation, introducing Frusciante's voice for the first time on the record. The calm pace is kept but instrumentation now expanded and arrangements getting more detailed, and Frusciante interprets the song beautifully - it very much is a literal siren song beckoning the listener deeper into the sound, and it's one of the most vulnerably beautiful pieces Frusciante has committed on record. The almost cold open of "Unreachable" is the wake-up call after the two dreamers before it. Its steady pace is reminiscent of "Before the Beginning" just with a brisker touch, but eventually it culminates into a furious crescendo that finally, after two and a half songs, kicks the album truly into motion. If that sounds like a really slow, meandering opening, it's anything but: the way the opening trio is paced and quietly builds up on one another as a long-form slide into the album's world is spectacular, and when "Unreachable" unfurls after all that subtle build-up, it's phenomenal.
The Empyrean features a similar sort of arrangement galore throughout. The flow of the album is brilliant and there's a clear indication it was designed from the get-go to be listened to as a whole unit. There's little arrangement delights throughout both musically and from a more meta perspective: songs called "Enough of Me" and "One More of Me" that share the same melody, surrounding a song titled "Central" is just the most overt of them. The aim to create a musical narrative leads to a cohesive but an increasingly free-form nature of the actual song structures to guide the ebb and flow of the drama rather than racing for the ABABCB structure, and together with the often extended lengths of the songs Frusciante's familiar songwriting style has gained a gentle prog rock undercurrent. To complement this, The Empyrean also features the richest sound Frusciante has ever featured on his albums to help bring all the nuances to life. It's an all-star cast ranging from frequent solo collaborator Josh Klinghoffer and RHCP-bandmate Flea dealing with most of the rhythm section throughout the album, to one-off guest spots like Johnny Marr (on "Central", where his guitar either drowns under Frusciante's or he chooses to imitate Frusciante's style). A string quartet features regularly - a Frusciante first - to lend select songs a slightly more epic scope. It's all very uncharacteristically indulgent for Frusciante, but after a series of records that had a humble, home-recorded sound, it's positively boastful.
Where it only so slightly falters is that so much of the album is dedicated to act as one narrative piece, that when considered piece-by-piece it comes across less impressive. Apart from the opening trio there's only two other big stand-out songs scattered across The Empyrean, and it's the two lengthy ones, "Dark/Light" and "Central". The other songs feel like they've been written primarily to pad the narrative forward, enjoyable as they are. For example, the keyboard-heavy rock-out "God" and the more traditionally Frusciante-like autumnal mid-tempo "Enough of Me" are good songs, and I particularly love the penultimate section of "Enough of Me" as the song switches onto a brighter note; but measure them against earlier album deep cuts and they're not quite as exciting after all. It's the same across the rest. "After the Ending" makes for a really effective closer with its atmospheric and slightly ethereal sound, sending the listener alongside the protagonist to some great void into the unknown, but as a song it's not much to write home about; "One More of Me" is mainly notable for Frusciante adopting an oddly guttural singing voice and for being a sneaky reprise; and "Heaven" simply sinks between more memorable cuts. For a person like me who always makes too much of a point about the context of the whole album and who listens to these things in full more often than not, this shouldn't really be an issue - and it's not, because while it's on The Empyrean makes a very good sonical journey, in particular through a good set of headphones. But when it takes a good moment or two to remember how some of these songs go following a regular stint of listening to the album, something's a little amiss enough to point it out
But you do have those two latter-album highlights, and what songs those two are. "Dark/Light" moves from a glacial and solemnly spatial piano piece to a bright, choir-starring call-and-answer cut that might go on a little bit too long perhaps, but the switch between the two sounds is a delight each time and the "Light" section is full of wonderful elements, from the choir trading lines with Frusciante to the lively bass riff that's jamming its own thing over the simple drum machine. "Central" is the centerpiece colossus, the Moment that the rest of the album seems to build up to and then spends the remainder recovering from - it sees Frusciante firing at all guns to create a monster of an anthem, with roaring guitar solos, string sections, intense vocals, explosive breakdowns... you name it. It's a huge song and a powerhouse of a performance that sounds almost unhinged if not for the clear precision in its production. Both move well beyond Frusciante's typical musical borders in scope, showing off he can do something larger than life if his mood strikes right. The album would be a greatly lesser work without them, both from the perspective of how much life they bring to the sequence but just from a quality perspective as well; the latter, in particular, is the real winner of the record and the one that rises above everything else the most.
The Empyrean would go to close off an era for Frusciante. The 2000s were a humongous decade for the man musically, not just as as a wildly prolific and consistent solo artist but at the same time also leading the Chili Peppers through the most successful part of their career, solidifying himself as the all-time iconic guitarist for the band who had seen so many of them come and go. Roll forward to the next decade and Frusciante would leave the Peppers for good and subsequently reinvent himself musically, leaving behind his standard rock background and ditching his guitar behind with it. It's hard not to then see The Empyrean as something of a culmination point for the decade it closes off. It's a sum of all the lessons learned and tricks showcased throughout the past decade before they were to be washed away, from distilling its tracklist to the very essentials rather than sprawling 15+ song albums, to bringing back a full-fledged studio production without straying too far away from the living room warmth of the 2004/2005 set of releases. After a decade of sprawling records and recording sessions there's finally an album that's a cohesive unit from its origination to the final release, as if to finally give a nod to certain parts of the audience and say it's always been possible, just never been in the mindset for it. For all that I give it the applause it deserves, because above all The Empyrean is a gorgeously constructed whole - in the right context and place it's absolutely a journey that seizes the attention. It only really suffers when compared against its kin in a wider context, but artistically it's a showcase for Frusciante and at its best it's downright brilliant, even if its sole focus in its own singular experience can be both a boon and fault. It's only that which makes me downrate this slightly; most days of the year I'd find myself moving towards another solo record of his simply because they're stronger to stand out, and that ends up accounting in the rating. It's only when it's on that I actually remember the strengths of The Empyrean.
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