399 - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication

[csberry]

Californication marked the return on John Frusciante as the guitarist for the band after the one-album stint by Dave Navarro (Jane's Addiction). With the return of John, the album ditched the sound of One Hot Minute and was halfway a return to the classic RHCP sound and halfway a continuing evolution to a more mainstream rock sound.

I like the collection of songs overall. I'm bothered by two things:

1. Track placement - I found a severe lack of flow between songs. Because they have some high-energy funk-punk songs ("Get on Top" and "Right on Time") and some super-squishy songs ("Scar Tissue" and "Road Trippin'"), they had a bit of challenge on how to get the songs to fit together well. Unfortunately, much of the time they put some of the slowest songs next to the loudest and fastest songs.

2. "Loudness" - nearly all of the non-soft songs sound over-modulated and harsh. Many times I was in the middle of a song I was bouncing along to and found myself unable to discern much of the mid-high end of the music; it all seemed squished together, creating a din of sound atop a rhythm track.

As someone that thinks of Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magic when I think about the RHCPs, I find myself willing to put this album in the mix with those two despite my loss of interest for much of the second half of the album.

Songs I knew I liked: "Around the World" and "Road Trippin'" (I have mixed emotions on "Scar Tissue," "Otherside," and "Californication")

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Parallel Universe" and "Get on Top"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: "Easily," "Porcelain," "Emit Remmus," and "Purple Stain" in particular. Honestly, everything between "Californication" and "Road Trippin'" covering the second half was okay, but didn't grab me enough to care to listen to them again.