John Frusciante - Outsides EP (2013)

1) Same; 2) Breathiac; 3) Shelf

Three tracks worth of Frusciante tinkering with his music programs and little else. 

Key tracks: "Same"

Calling Outsides an EP in the greater sense of being a bite-size cohesive body of work is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of a single with two b-sides, except the single is a 10-minute experimental cut.

That song, "Same", is a 10½ minute guitar solo backed by a short drum loop, which Frusciante chops up and repurposes and rearranges throughout those ten minutes in a variety of ways. The solo is merely an excuse for him to test loop manipulation and the song doesn't particularly grow or intensify during its length, but still morphs restlessly as the same beats switch shapes. It's the best song overall on the EP, genuinely good even, but after the first 6-7 minutes it's said everything has to say and the rest is simply made for zoning out if you're in that kind of mood. And it's certainly better than its "b-sides". "Breathiac" is a pile of noise and the worst thing Frusciante has committed on record since the 90s drug days finished - it's a mishmash of dissonant sound with no reason or rhyme, and it's hard to really think what Frusciante aimed to do with it. "Shelf" doesn't begin any better and is initially just a half-brained sound collage, but towards the end an actual song begins to emerge and the final couple of minutes actually get genuinely good, offering exactly the kind of artsy synth pop John promised back when he first announced going electronic. 

The common thread between the three songs is the sound of Frusciante moving further with electronic sound, somewhere more abstract and, at least within his own scope, boundary-breaking. The crux is that they're experiments first, songs second if even considered at all. Outsides is for Frusciante first and foremost, and I can't help but think that the sole reason why there's an official release of this for a wider audience is more to do with the label than Frusciante having a particular artistic itch to scratch. It has its enjoyable parts but none of it feels like it has any impact, whereas Frusciante's prior EPs at least had some element that might bring you back to it later. Outsides isn't a weak release as much as it is forgettable; the sort of thing that even a big time fan could foresee themselves giving a pass.

Rating: 5/10