Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers – The Getaway

‘The Getaway’ offers a relatively mellow sound that grows on you

KARACHI: In June 2016, while speaking to a Los Angeles-based radio station, Anthony Kiedis said he wished he wouldn’t be referred to as a ‘rock star’. He explained that the last true remnants of rock stars were bands such as Led Zeppelin, to whom a particular way of life came naturally and was not forced. Thereafter, all musicians or bands that have been labelled thus, have merely attempted to emulate this lifestyle and fit a profile that in fact belongs to an era long gone. At the twilight of his career, Kiedis remains true to the outlaw and ‘freak’ ethos that defines the Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP).

In a 1991 documentary titled Funky Monks, the band’s bassist Flea laid out the basics. “Anyone that would consciously apply any sort of rock n’ roll cliches to their life would obviously not fit in as a Red Hot Chili Pepper”, he said. “Being in the RHCP is about… not trying to fit into any mould or any category.”

But the RHCP had been around long before radio-listening and MTV-watching audiences across the world took notice of them with 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik. In fact many old fans feel that the band recorded their best material in the late 80s. Albums such as The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987) and Mother’s Milk (1989) sound like nothing else from that period. In hindsight, the sound appears to have been way ahead of its time.

Listeners who let their musical tastes be determined by the charts and radio hits and who heard of the Chili Peppers post-1991 through these very mediums, would have most likely found the band to be even more eccentric had they heard them in the 1980s. The RHCP weren’t necessarily radio-friendly and were not interested in fitting into the narrow confines of what was considered ‘cool’. Those with an affinity for the avante garde would have welcomed the funk and ska-influenced hybrid like a breath of fresh air.

It is important to keep this background in mind when approaching their latest album, The Getaway. At a first listen, fans may feel that the band has traded in its raw funkiness for a more sober, melodic sound. Yet as the album grows on you, you think twice before jumping to any conclusions. With the death in 1988 of guitarist Hillel Slovak – founding member and childhood friend of Kiedis and Flea – and the second-time departure of guitarist John Frusciante from the band in 2009, the Chili Peppers have experienced the inevitability of the single-most certain thing in life: loss. This is reflected in the mellowness of the sound. And as voids are filled by guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and the production of Danger Mouse, what we get is an interesting new brew.

On the first single, ‘Dark Necessities’, the now drug-free Kiedis acknowledges his lifelong battle with heroin as part of his development. He embraces and seeks to understand his dark side instead of ignoring it.

The hardest-rocking numbers on the relatively mellow-sounding album are ‘We Turn Red’, ‘Detroit’ and ‘This Ticonderoga’. With its opening drumbeat and winding funk, ‘We Turn Red’ sounds like a throwback to ‘The Righteous and the Wicked’. At the root of this song is the idea of two opposing and contradictory forces co-existing in a state of constant friction; the tendency of humans to fluctuate from one emotion to another; the existence of ideologies on opposite ends of a spectrum; a bipolar world. The pun “We turn red and we turn green” – chili peppers (of the vegetable variety) tend to come in these two colours – has political undertones. On the one hand American society prioritises the environment and ideas of renewal and harmony, yet on the other hand there is intolerance and bigotry. “Mexico you are my neighbour… give me all your sick and tired, races we admire” is a retort to the American far-right’s racist tirade on Mexicans, whom they blame for the country’s ills.

“We got large and we got small, we got a swimming pool and a cannon ball” could refer to the extravagance of a Hollywood Hills lifestyle, under the stilts of which lurks a sinister reality of mass shootings and celebrity murders, as well as America’s unjust wars not only on foreign shores but against the very natives of their soil.

‘The Hunter’ is melodic and an instant classic. It effectively captures the sinking feeling that comes with confronting the reality of ageing: “The hunter gets hunted; we all get confronted… I still like to think that I’m new”, but “time just gets its way”. The song is also an ode to Kiedis’ father, as the irreversible process of ageing is tied-in with the concept of fatherhood: “Even though you raised me, I will never be your father – king of each and every Sunset Marquis”. As a child, Kiedis idolised his father who was a drug-dealer and social kingpin on the Sunset scene in the early 70s; he was known as “The Lord of Sunset Strip” as Kiedis recalls in his inspirational and moving autobiography, Scar Tissue (Time Warner Books, 2004).

The name of the album and its first song refer to a ‘Getaway’ of sorts. The cover art depicts species native to California on a march out of the city hub, in this case Los Angeles. Interestingly, the red fox leading them is not native to California but to Sierra Nevada. Gang graffiti indicating territorialism, common in the downtown area, can also be seen in the image. The depiction of a child and various animals on the move can be interpreted as a loose adaptation of the story of Noah’s Ark.

The song of the same name refers to a stereotypical ‘getaway’ of “lonely superstars” with a newfound partner. But the cynical tone of the lyrics implies that such escapism is short-lived and illusory: “Complete, repeat, sitting in your car and on your street, lost in California.” Real change takes place from within.

All the eccentricities expected on a RHCP album are present, but humility and wisdom, increasingly apparent in old age, are also incorporated into the mix.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Verdict: Mellower than previous albums, but the Danger Mouse-produced sound grows on you



Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2016.

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