LUMP - LUMP (2018)

1) Late to the Flight; 2) May I Be the Light; 3) Rolling Thunder; 4) Curse of the Contemporary; 5) Hand Hold Hero; 6) Shake Your Shelter; 7) LUMP Is a Product

Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay collaborate on a headphone-friendly and frustratingly short dream sequence journey.

Key tracks: "Late to the Flight", "Curse of the Contemporary", "Shake Your Shelter"

I started losing track of Laura Marling's career rather soon after it began. I loved her debut but she found her signature sound after it, and unfortunately for me her more somber folk leanings just left me longing for more of her first album's playfulness. There was the occasional nice little ditty but it took until 2018 for me to really pay attention again. "Curse of the Contemporary", the lead single from LUMP - Marling's collaboration with Tunng's Mike Lindsay - was the most refreshing thing she had been a part of in what felt like forever. The sneakily foot-tapping groove underneath the manipulated guitars was a fantastic fit for Marling's still ethereal and charismatic voice, and after an extended period of that voice getting lost between shades of gray and beige it was great to hear it flourish in something full of life again.

"Curse of the Contemporary" is a bit of a red herring for LUMP's self-titled debut, in that it's the only song across the brief seven-track set (of which only six are really songs) which has that kind of mischievous sense of fun to it. LUMP is, for most parts, very much the opposite. The electronic-oriented production is characterised by vast amounts of space, with carefully selected instrumental details growing their presence ever-so-subtly across the stretched out minutes. Marling's verses, oft repeated and rarely shifting into any other recognisable songwriting sections, are more akin to mantras where the rhythm and tone are just as important, if not more, than the actual words. Marling's voice is a fantastic one, and here she's often using it in a way completely different to what I'm used to from her. The soundscapes she and Lindsay then craft around those vocal parts have a slight sense of dream-like askewness; lots of ethereal moodiness to sink into, if it wasn't for a foreboding feeling of everything teetering over the edge just out of sight.

LUMP's strengths lie in that atmosphere. The segued-together songs form one large aural ambience where the differences between the songs may not necessarily strike out if you're not actually paying attention. LUMP is a headphone album, through and through - you only get everything out of it once you're actually in a position where you can literally hear all the small movements and can focus on them, and this is particularly true for the first half. The gorgeous slow start "Late to the Flight" is whatever you could call a lullaby that softly brings you back to the waking life, and "May I Be the Light" flutters and stutters nervously with a specifically chosen set of instruments slowly tying it down towards its end - both different in their own ways, but so obsessed with keeping a certain kind of sonic cohesiveness which paints them in vastly the same colours. It's only the cymbal crashes in the pseudo-rock-out finale of "Rolling Thunder" that first burst the cloud wide open briefly, signaling the album's incoming decision to sit up and make a stand for its second half.

As positively hypnotic as LUMP can be, it never gets as exciting as it does on "Curse of the Contemporary". Marling's multi-tracked vocals form a layer over layer on top of the swirling, ghost-like guitars, and the song picks up in twitchy intensity as it dances away towards its conclusion: it sounds like two collaborators hitting off perfectly outside their usual comfort zones and brainstorming a party of their own. It's the rightful stand-out song of the album, and while it's completely out of sync with the rest of the record stylistically, its placement right in the middle works out fantastically naturally as part of the overall flow, where the first half feels like a intro building itself piece by piece and then the second half serves as the comedown from the rollercoaster ride.

Following its centrepoint, LUMP showcases another side of itself - one that starts giving a bit of a backbone to its ambience while still operating from its dream-like shell. The bubbling synth buzz and pounding beat of "Hand Hold Hero" disturb the record's overall serenity with a number of juxtaposing sounds, threatening to rise up and march out but holding itself back by a thread. "Shake Your Shelter" becomes another key standout: of all the songs on the album's calmer spectrum it's the most fleshed-out in its arrangement, sounding like an alternative rock slowburner coming from somewhere deep underwater, with the weight and cold dark foreboding of the dark water surrounding it. It's arguably the most conventional cut of the record but it gives the short run of songs a fitting finale by bringing all the sound elements of the project together. Its only ugly spot is how abruptly it leads to the premature end of the actual outro track "LUMP Is a Product" - for such a collected album, it finishes in a rush.

(Fun fact: "LUMP Is a Product" differs rather drastically between the digital and physical versions of the album. On CD/LP it's little more than an ambient intro with vaguely audible, heavily processed vocal clips; digitally, it features Marling audibly reading out the album's credits that would otherwise be found in the actual physical liner notes. Notch for the streamers - it's a far more intriguing of a closer with Marling's spoken word acknowledgments on it than without.)

The quick closure is a shame because for its short duration LUMP is an intriguing, exciting little collaboration piece, and it ends just as it's really began to entice you. It's great to hear Marling, whose voice I've always loved, partake in something where she sounds properly engaged again, and there's something truly entrancing to the songs here when they get going. It misses just that little extra dash of something more to make it a magical listen, which makes it particularly pesky that it also bears the hallmarks of a one-off project where the lightning might never strike again - but it's something that stays with you, simply because the presence of Marling in this Twin Peaks dream sequence ambient pop dimension works so well.

Rating: 7/10

Bon Iver - 22, a Million (2016)

1) 22 (OVER S∞∞N); 2) 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄; 3) 715 - CR∑∑KS; 4) 33 "GOD"; 5) 29 #Strafford APTS; 6) 666 ʇ; 7) 21 M◊◊N WATER; 8) 8 (Circle); 9) ____45_____; 10) 00000 Million

Another album, another re-invention - abstract and electronic, yet impossibly human. Vernon tries to make sense out of the world within himself, while giving the door to the listener to do the same.

Key tracks: "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄", "666 ʇ", "8 (Circle)"

2016 in retrospect was a watershed year for a lot of the personal and collective anxiety many of my generation and the later ones have been experiencing. It's when dodgy, out-of-touch politics really reared their ugly head in force all around the world at once and many of the issues of late 2010s (and probably the foreseeable future, 2020 writing here) became a tangible part of reality. It was a year of turmoil and it launched a lot of people into a spiral of discordant thoughts, muddled up and trying to figure out their place in a world that had stopped making sense.

Justin Vernon didn't mean to do it, but he inadvertently created the right album for these wrong times. 22, a Million began as a dream-like log of one man's struggle to balance between his public role and his personal feelings - the change from the one-man cabin operation of For Emma, Forever Ago to the wide open breakthrough fame following Bon Iver, Bon Iver was never going to be a comfortable fit for a man so obviously introverted, and once the Grammy appearances and high-profile collaborations had quieted down, Vernon went on a hiatus. The future of Bon Iver as a project became a series of vague umms and ahhs from Vernon, completely uninterested in returning to mass adoration and uncertain what he'd do next. It wasn't until a moment of clarity during another self-imposed exile that Vernon returned to his main project, and in hindsight it's all really obvious that the next step for Bon Iver would be to obscure things from view. Cryptic visual design from the symbol-heavy artwork to the surreal lyric videos, the even more cryptic song titles, Vernon insisting on covering his face on every single promo picture - all built up to a sound that would be as far a stretch from the warm and rich double self-titled as that was from For Emma's sparseness. Reflecting on the relationship between the huge global audience of "a million" that he had somehow cultivated and himself - the "22" - Vernon decided that the only way for him to reconcile with his new visibility was to take things down and rebuild them all over again.

22, a Million is chopped-up and fragmented: it plays around with sound levels, samples and song structures while Vernon twists and filters his own voice to inhuman levels. The preceding album's warm soulful anthems are still clearly there in the very heart of Vernon's songwriting, but he has broken those recognisable elements into tiny pieces, distorting the resulting shrapnel and glued them back together into new shapes. Synthesized falsettos, skittering samples and frantic drum loops coat the album's sound world, the production busily stretching itself to create a hedge between Vernon and the listener. You can peak through the gaps but there's a lot of noise on the way - less a maximalist production, and moreso one that's simply hectic with details and trace elements. With that, Vernon's lyrics have also become increasingly more oblique, littered with made-up words and non-sequiturs to the point that even if you see eye-to-eye with his musical vision, the actual meaning of the songs can still remain a mystery. It wasn't an album made for you, it was an album made for Vernon to sort out his own chaotic thoughts into something coherent, and in turn the music reflected the same process.

Despite the cautiously confrontational nature and his radical reinvention, what's been left completely intact is Vernon’s otherworldly way to tap into something universally beautiful with his music. In-between all the at-first seemingly chaotic elements, there are masses of incredible melodies, heavenly harmonies and and the kind of human warmth that no laptop wizardry can take away. 22, A Million is an intimate but inviting experience that hides a lot more within it than the first glance, solely focused on its attention-grabbing sound (and those song titles), would reveal. The same songwriting foundations that brought the immediately captivating, anthemic power of the likes of "Holocene" and "Flume" are still making its presence known throughout, and Vernon himself has stayed the same. Still impeccably earnest and totally living each note of each song through his entire being, his honest love for his own music leads him to infuse 100% of himself into it; that belief in your own craft is impossible to hide, even when he's obstructed by technology. So much in fact, that I'd argue this is Vernon at his most personal: it may be far more collaborative in nature than the one-man show of his debut, but its search for clarity and that you could hold onto comes completely from its creator, and he makes it audible that it all comes directly from the heart. 

 
When the album was finally released, at the tail-end of 2016, the world as a whole needed that kind of moment of clarity amidst all the overload of bad news and bad times. I needed it - I'm projecting a lot here because 22, a Million became a sort of a sonic wall to lean into while convalescing from the world around me. That its beauty hid within a Geocities gif storm production was - and is - essential: because when the clouds clear away and those different strands find their connection point within the songs, the bits where the disarray starts forming into shape, it's breathtaking. The first two records might have made it more obvious but it's very, very hard for Vernon not write beautiful songs, and I'd say that's the strongest reason why he's gained a following; with every song a soul-searching ballad begging to form a bond with the listener, but transformed along the way into different shapes through the collaborators he brings with him and the changing visions he has for his path. The ones chosen here may be a little unorthodox compared to the first two records, yet the bliss remains.

And 22, a Million is, by far and most of all, a very beautiful album. "33 "GOD"" and "666 ʇ" are anthems that embrace the world within their soaring arms while big drum beats crash and pound - they're those epic communal moments of the previous album finding a new form and understanding of dynamics. "29 #Strafford APTS" is the opposite, a folky campfire song that harks back to Bon Iver's roots, a tranquil and straightforward piece where the only trace of the rest of the album is its infrequent vocal manipulation, but its contrast to the rest is soft and comforting. "715 - CR∑∑KS" and "21 M◊◊N WATER" are in a practical sense just interludes - passages of music that bind the album's movements together - but they're integral moments of stillness in the high-speed attention race of the rest of the album, with the former in particular taking the experimental nature of the Blood Bank EP's "Woods" and creating a song that's a catalogue standout despite being a vocoderised a cappella cut. The tribal march of "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄" (where its drums sound like they're coming from somewhere beyond) is brief but powerful, its horn rise towards the end threatening to become colossal before the song cuts itself off - following the quiet scene-setting intro of "22 (OVER S∞∞N)" it's a wall-shattering alarm clock into the real world, and the transition between the two is still incredible. 

By the end, the album's restless nature finds its peace. The stunningly disarming couple of "8 (Circle)" and "00000 Million", as well as the brief bridge of "____45_____" that binds them together, is an incredible closing set: they're the sound of all the weight in the world being lifted from one's shoulders. "8 (Circle)" ascends into the heavens sounding pure, free and wholly released as horn sections and layered vocal harmonies trace its journey. It's where the album's hectic heart starts beating slower, its in-this-context massive five-minute length a serene trail without a single interruption. "00000 Million" lays the album to rest with a gentle piano and hymnal vocal, in what is one of Vernon's most touching and starkly, emotionally naked songs. There's this clichéd feeling where a truly great album closer can really feel like the closure of a journey, the credits roll that gives you the tools to reflect on all you heard before and bringing it all together: "00000 Million" absolutely hits that ideal and quietly wakes one up back into reality again, refreshed and anew.

It's what Vernon needed. It's what I, as a listener needed. And it's why 22, a Million is such a powerful album. It's hit the point where the personal becomes truly inseparable from the pretendingly objective. The songs are fantastic, quirks and all - it's Vernon's peak in terms of both the writing and his arrangements coming together to create something bigger than the two parts alone, an album with a true vision. But it's also an immensely resonant album, the sort of record where its creator has poured blood, sweat and tears into it because he needed to, and that emotional force is an integral part of the material. It lifts a great record into something important - something that stays with you for a long, long time after it's gone. The first two albums had the sound that they would always become someone's classic album - the deconstructed version Vernon laid out here has become mine.

Rating: 10/10

Blossoms - Blossoms (2006)

1) One Night; 2) Downtown; 3) Sonando de la Luz; 4) Dust to Dust; 5) Love Me for a While; 6) Get Laid; 7) Celebration; 8) Go Get It!; 9) Skyhigh; 10) Beach

Not the British 2010s crew, but a group of wild-spirited party monsters from mid-00s Finland with an infectious groove and floor-filling jams to back it up. 

Key tracks: "One Night", "Love Me for a While", "Beach"

There are party albums - records that go down a storm in any social gathering - and then there are albums that sound like they're part of the party. Each song is a sensory experience that takes you right in the middle of the crowd full of frenetic energy, soundtracked by someone's friend's band playing in a packed-up corner and making joyous noise that everyone is lapping up - and the band is actually good as well. Blossoms' (not that more famous British band from the 2010's) debut sounds like the ideal kind of house party that only exists in someone's exaggerated imagination, and its greatest feat is how just tangible that feel is in their music.

I saw Blossoms live shortly before the release of this album and while the stage was tiny and the audience almost as small, they commanded the vibe to perfection and turned a mid-day open air stage into what felt like a tight nightclub set. The greatest thing that the self-titled debut does is what so many albums try but never quite grasp, and that's perfectly capturing that raw power and chemistry the band had while performing. The songs are straight-forward and to the point, there's no messing around and nothing to hide in - the rhythm section keeps it four-to-the-floor while the band flick between funkier rock and groovier pop, the hooks are underlined for obvious sing-along purposes and everything leads to the big obvious chorus designed to get the audience jumping. But Blossoms know what they are doing and the band operates on a telepathic level to pull it off, and the album captures that completely. A lot of it is thanks to frontman Aki Toivoniemi: his Nordic accent is strong but so is his charisma, and it's that party ringleader aura that pulls the brash and bold album together. If there is one main takeaway here, it's that Blossoms were natural born stage commanders.

Two of the songs here are already familiar (to a tiny subsection of people like me): "One Night" and "Beach" were both found on the band's also self-titled debut EP and have been re-recorded here on account of becoming the obvious standouts of the EP, and both sound better than ever. "One Night"'s girl-boy cruiseship disco duet sounds bigger and bolder, and the promising could-be-hit has now gone through a training montage and is now kicking down doors to claim its throne, with a beefier backbone powering the great melodic strength of the original. The original duet partner Sara Nurmi reprises her role as well which is a delight, because her chemistry with Aki is perfect: it's equally great that she is almost part of the band throughout the record, with her vocals appearing throughout the album and working so well with Aki's with their intertwining vocal hooks. "Beach" is the one moment where Blossoms get a little more serious, closing the album with a yearning and intense rumination on life's fleeting nature: it's atypical for the band, but it's a powerful, crunchy rock and roll finale that's as close to perfection as the album gets. Of the wholly new songs, the sweat-dripping dancefloor cruiser "Get Laid" and the pogoing "Downtown" with its Britrock-flirting chorus are instant standouts; the real big one is "Love Me for a While" though, which builds from its suave string-accentuated funk rock into a series of jam finales which each could go on for minutes alone, tightening the groove bit by bit. On an album full of house party anthems, it's a giant destined for a larger stage.

The ten feel-good anthems presented here are consistent throughout: Blossoms have a clear formula that they know how to pull off and which the album barely ever deviates from. The thing with having such a clear chosen direction is that it makes the difference between the big keepers of the record and the rest that much clearer, and so is the case here too, but it's nothing to the extent that would break the tone. The album gets a little newspaper bop on the head from the faux-Latin flair of "Sonando de la Luz", whose occasional charms aren't enough to overcome my allergy for cheap Latin references, but that's the album's only real tripping point. Even on the rare occasion where things aren't necessarily quite as exciting (e.g. "Go Get It!" is a bit of a lesser retread of the relentless energy of "Downtown" and "Get Laid"), Blossoms' wild spirit picks things up - it really is an album where the interaction between everyone participating in its recording absolutely shines, and it always takes me back to that brief live appearance I saw. I'd wager that even without that personal reference point, it's clear just how captivating the band's energy throughout the record is.

Blossoms feels like it could have been the first steps of a future cult next big thing but for reasons unknown the band ended up on near in-definite hiatus following this and that alternate timeline never happened (and I would have called it a split had I not learned of the surprise follow-up album roughly a decade after this one). Very few seem to be aware of this ever existing but given its strengths in what it does, it's become a regular entry in various party mixes, playlists et al I've had a hand in over the years. So, at least in a microscopic scale Blossoms' talent for a good celebration still makes itself known. There are musically greater albums than this that sound less convincing about their creators' chemistry than this low-key self-release, and that's always going to be to Blossoms' credit.

Rating: 7/10

Peter Buck - Peter Buck (2012)

1) 10 Million BC; 2) It's Alright; 3) Some Kind of Velvet Sunday Morning; 4) Travel Without Arriving; 5) Migraine; 6) Give Me Back My Wig; 7) Nothing Matters; 8) So Long Johnny; 9) L.V.M.F.; 10) Nothing Means Nothing; 11) Hard Old World; 12) Nowhere No Way; 13) Vaso Loco; 14) I'm Alive

Peter Buck is bored after the R.E.M. retirement, records an album for funsies. No more, no less. Leave all expectations behind and you might find something to raise a smile.

Key tracks: "10 Million BC", "Nothing Matters", "Vaso Loco"

Despite his public persona being Mr Grumpypants, Peter Buck's solo debut is actually a fun, lighthearted effort - and it's not too surprising that's the case. Buck's attitude to music has always been very grounded - rather than go on about artistic merits and deep concepts behind each note, he's the kind of guy who plays music because he finds it fun. He's never been one to take the lead or complain that he didn't get enough creative spotlight in his former day R.E.M. day job. He's also expressed his dislike of the typically lengthy and detail-focused album recording process several times in the past, preferring to record things quickly and by the gut. Thus, Peter Buck turning out to be a lighthearted, quickly recorded set of songs written and recorded purely because he found it fun to play some new tunes with his friends, with the spark of inspiration being Buck's battle against boredom rather than anything more auteur-like, makes perfect sense.

Because of his cooperative role in R.E.M., the question of what a Peter Buck solo album would sound like has never had even hint of an answer. As it turns out, it contains a lot of things. Rough garage rockers, The Velvet Underground-pastiches, hip-hop loops, keyboard ambiance, novelty covers and sweet singer/songwriter pop all all appear in semi-random fashion, peppered throughout by random banter ("if that ain't art, I don't know what is"). The plethora of guest vocalists contribute to the patch quilt feel and the album comes closer to a ragtag compilation of obscure songs from the 60s and 70s than to something largely helmed by one artist and his vision. The occasional lead vocal from Buck himself, gruffing and huffing his way through a distorted microphone, is there mainly just to give the occasional reminder on whose name the album is released under. 

Take it only by its songwriting and it's hardly an impressive album, even less so if you expected Buck to bring over anything even reminiscent of the R.E.M. catalogue here. There's a few songs where it feels like some time was actually spent the writing of the song, such as the upbeat shout-along "So Long Johnny" and the psychedelic rock offshoot "Nothing Matters", though even they feel a little like pastiches rather than something to judge on their own merit. But taking the album at that face value almost feels like missing the actual point. Peter Buck - the album - wasn't created out of artistic expression and it's not going to offer it. It's silly and it's fun, and it never tries to be anything beyond that. Its best parts are the ones that represent that side of it the most: the ridiculous hip-hop loop "LVMF", the punk rock freakout "Vaso Loco" and the infectious hard rock of "10 Million BC" are the most memorable takeaways from the album, none of them anything to write into a review about as songs but all surprisingly infectious stupid fun nonetheless.

The album's random nature, the incredibly limited release and Buck's own motivations for doing it all speak for it being a deliberately low-key release made purely for personal kicks and laughs. But it has its simple charisma I can't deny, even if it'll likely take me the same five years between now and the next time I play it as it did between now and the last time I listened to this. It's the kind of album you completely forget about but which will one day turn up in a shuffle and get you smiling for a moment, because it's goofy enough to charm you for a while even if it's a complete throwaway otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if Buck himself thinks the same way, either.

Rating: 5/10

Manic Street Preachers - New Art Riot EP (1990)

1) New Art Riot; 2) Strip It Down; 3) Last Exit on Yesterday; 4) Teenage 20/20

Sloganeering naïve punk with no subtlety but some fun hooks.

Key tracks: "New Art Riot", "Strip It Down"

I'm probably approaching this from the completely incorrect angle but even though this is the debut EP (following a couple of limited print singles) of a group of politically aware young Welsh punks wanting to disrupt the pop culture system, it's just so gosh dang adorable. The young Manic Street Preachers are fiery and hungry for glory, but the future powerhouse vocalist James Dean Bradfield is still bright-eyed and squeaky-voiced, the songs are simple chug-along riffs full of energy and devoid of nuance (and they don't care one bit), and the lyrics are more akin to a selection of wannabe-activist slogans strung together than anything coherent. If there's such a thing as charmingly youthful, then this is it. The baby photos of your favourite band.

Maybe that does New Art Riot EP a little dirty because it has its musical charms too. The Manics showcased here are still far, far away from where they'd be even the following year when they would release their first landmark single "Motown Junk"; these are simple, one-note songs where the sole idea they have going for them is usually presented within the first 30 seconds. But they're catchy songs in a purely primitive fashion. The title track threatens to become almost anthemic in its chorus and has the clearest The Clash influence of the lot, "Strip It Down" is a speeding car heading hundred miles an hour towards the nearest wall and has a ton of fun with it - both are a load of fun in the right mindset. The latter half of the EP isn't quite as up to scratch, though the "we're dead end dolls and nothing's moving" refrain of "Teenage 20/20" ends the EP with a dose of excellent teenage arrogance. "Last Exit on Yesterday" is the obvious slip between the cracks because it's just kind of there, doing the same as the other three songs but without the one big hook that'll lodge it in your mind unexpectedly.

New Art Riot isn't a classic or even a particularly noteworthy debut EP, but it's where the Manics get themselves together for the first time. The singles before this aren't acknowledged or remembered by anyone but the hardcore fans and there's a very good reason for that. This still isn't the grand arrival of a new musical force either, but for the first time there's a hint of the bratty attitude of the early Manics actually mixing up with something musically interesting, and that serves as the launch pad for the real noteworthy singles released up next. New Art Riot meanwhile is a fun little thing best enjoyed by the fans who are hungry enough to get this far down in the discography: there's a certain naïve joy to hearing the future rock powerhouse being a wild bunch of young punks.

Rating: 6/10

Red Hot Chili Peppers - By the Way (2002)

1) By the Way; 2) Universally Speaking; 3) This Is the Place; 4) Dosed; 5) Don’t Forget Me; 6) The Zephyr Song; 7) Can’t Stop; 8) I Could Die for You; 9) Midnight; 10) Throw Away Your Television; 11) Cabron; 12) Tear; 13) On Mercury; 14) Minor Thing; 15) Warm Tape; 16) Venice Queen

A mature, introspective work from... Chili Peppers? It works far better than you'd think.

Key tracks: "Dosed", "Can't Stop", "Venice Queen"

By the Way, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ eight studio album, is effectively an album by two people.

One of them is John Frusciante. The tale of of Frusciante’s near-death and rebirth is a part of modern rock history: his return to the Peppers all sobered up in the late nineties was a large part of the band becoming one of the biggest in the world as his rejuvenation had blessed him with creativity and talent that made him the one member even the haters admired. Frusciante was in fact so overflowing with creativity that he could barely contain it. The first half of the 00s features an insane burst of activity in his solo career and in the band he started upsetting the formerly iconic harmony between its members. By the Way, the second album of Frusciante’s second coming, is the ur-example of it.

For all purposes it’s as much a John Frusciante album as it is a Red Hot Chili Peppers one: his touch and direction are everywhere from the dominating layered guitar melodies to the carefully arranged keyboard flourishes, and his backing vocals have such a great presence throughout the album that you could argue he’s become the co-lead vocalist in the band. Peppers had always been a band where four clear individuals used their individual talents in brotherly harmony - this time they had a clear leader. Sound-wise it’s not too a long distance away from Frusciante’s 2004 solo release Shadows Collide With People, in fact - you’d be surprised how much the two albums share in common in their DNA.

The other person is Anthony Kiedis. Kiedis’ reputation is somewhat that of an anti-Frusciante: his technical skills aren’t really much to praise for and he tends to be seen as the group’s biggest liability. Unfairly so, because he is undoubtedly the Peppers’ frontman and a large part of the band’s charisma throughout the years has come from him. He may not be much of a lyricist or a perfect singer but he’s always been the heart and soul, the connecting thread between the eras. He’s always operated his duty with bravado and pomp, only leaving himself emotionally vulnerable at the rarest of times which has worked to the band’s advantage: it’s made the rare personal moments all the more special. However, around the By the Way sessions he had found himself in an unusually introspective mood. Drug relapses and subsequent recoveries, loss of a close friend and general weariness of age had started to get to him and had left him contemplative. For the first time Kiedis didn’t want to just jump around and share his love of California, and he approached the next album sessions with a different kind of mindset.

By the Way began as another Peppers album of funky basslines and powerful guitars, but Kiedis’ wistfulness made natural friends with Frusciante’s wish to go to a more melodic direction and soon they began to take over the show; Flea has later reminisced that this was the album he felt the most creatively dismissed and isolated on, being shafted aside as the good ship Frusciante took over the wheel. The vast majority of the songs on the album are driven by Frusciante’s keen ear for melodies and the arrangement while keyboards play a bigger part than they ever have on a Peppers album. These back an unusually somber Kiedis who reflects on life, death and love - his typical random word generator ramblings are still present but half the time even then he croons them out in a way that indicates that at least for him there is a real meaning there.

As a result By the Way is an album where the Peppers are reflective of their age and where two of them in particular are catching up to the craziness of their lives. In other words, it’s a mature album - in the genuine sense rather than as a lazy shorthand for the energy dropping down. Even the band photos inside are somber and melancholy, a far cry from the wild and colourful rock & roll craziness of the past. It’s a personal and emotionally open album - not their first of such kind as One Hot Minute made it there first, but where that album was aggressive and confrontational By the Way takes a more toned down and ultimately hopeful tone. It’s not a sad album full of middle-age melancholy despite the photos, but a lush and often quite beautiful one that’s full of world-worn positivity. It’s an album lead by two people who went through hell, survived and now reflect back on it while resting under the sun at last.

None of that means it’s an album full of ballads. Not only do the more melodic pieces vary greatly in tone and tempo, but there’s a decent number of more muscular cuts thrown throughout the tracklist. Some actively remind you of the past works to show they’re still the same band (the sudden funk rock attack “Can’t Stop”, jam-esque “Throw Away Your Television”, the Californication evolution “By the Way”), while others incorporate the new mood into the familiar rock aesthetics (the atmospheric hidden gem “This Is the Place”, the dark and brooding “Don’t Forget Me"). It’s as varied an album as anything the band have ever released, even if the percentage of midtempo cuts is higher this time - but they all sound distinctly different, and in all honesty they set up the standard this band should attempt to match with their other slower cuts. On the flipside, it’s also as overlong as anything the band have released since the 80s and comes with the usual filler caveat. The sixteen-strong tracklist could have been reduced by some for a better album, namely the overrunning novelty country shuffle (!!!) “Cabron” and the happy-go-lucky but somewhat throwaway ska-pop “On Mercury”, both of which seem like they were thrown in to lighten the mood when it wasn’t actually needed at all.

But it’s those mid-tempo tracks and the melodic emphasis where the real grandeur lies. John Frusciante was honestly a genius at this point, riding his imperial phase wave high and mighty as he glimmered with inspiration. By the Way is a genuinely gorgeous and beautiful album, which even now feels odd to say about a Red Hot Chili Peppers album but the evidence is right there. The approximately five million layered guitar melodies frolicing and dancing around in “Dosed”, the ethereal keyboards of “Warm Tape”, the sunset finale of “Minor Thing” or the majestic strings of “Midnight” - they’re all discography highlights when it comes to being honestly straight-up lovely and gorgeous, and just as well as songs in itself. Even the musically slightly weaker cuts like “Tear” or “I Could Die for You” are lifted up to something special as soon as Frusciante decides to step into the spotlight with his guitar, his keyboard arrangements and especially his vocals backing up Kiedis’ surprisingly suave voice. “Tear” even gives Flea his minor special contribution with a charming little trumpet solo that gives it that little something extra. “Venice Queen” at the end is the victory lap: half atmospheric and dreamy, half wild and energetic like a sudden wake-up call, building into a towering anthem of remembrance and celebration as the band and Kiedis in particular, in what is possibly his most invested vocal performance, bids farewell to Kiedis’ close friend who left this earthly realm before the album sessions. It’s easily among the band’s very best songs, and it sounds like it was the most effortlessly composed thing they ever did.

The same applies for most of the album. The band is clearly playing against their presumed type, but they go about it effortlessly and successfully. There is the obvious caveat that if it’s the energetic bouncers and funky basslines that you want and expect from a Peppers album, this isn’t it. By the Way is barely even a rock album and the funky monks are equally elsewhere. When the album was released this caused so much drift among fans, including some incredibly divisive opinion splits between my friends and myself back when we loved everything the Peppers had ever released to that point. But age has done nothing if not improve the album and point out its strengths. Both Kiedis and Frusciante were on the top of their game in both performance and songwriting and while taking such a creative control was ultimately a bad thing for the band - the rifts between Flea and Frusciante healed but never seemed to vanish entirely - it resulted in the most beautiful and sublime album they’ve released. It’s a different side to a band that’s often seemed one-dimensional to non-fans and downright revelatory in some ways. Above all else though, it’s a discography quirk that is in fact one of the best things under their name.

Rating: 9/10