After returning in the role of Lazarus to the long-running L.A. school play called RHCP, John Frusciante had a star turn in repurposing Californication and By the Way as wise, unwanky meditations on the mellow gold of life after hedonism. Parts of Shadows Collide with People align nicely with those records, both sonically and thematically, but the album is really an exercise in focusing, for Frusciante to ground his self-made stuff in the same resignation and emotion that makes the Chili Peppers' latter period more resonant than, say, "Magic Johnson". For Shadows, Frusciante has finally harnessed the energy and unqualified honesty that pulsed underneath the wandering Syd Barrett-ness of his weird work, and applied them to a reedy, vaguely psychedelic, and consistently melodic collection of songs. Heaven, pain, swirl, death, time, belief: on Shadows Collide with People, these are the splotches of color that burst most before his retinas.
He probably never was, but Shadows proves Frusciante's unconcern with upholding his oft-referenced stature as The Most Awesomest Guitarist of His Generation, or whatever. Yeah, yeah, there are electric guitars here-- the fame rumination "Second Walk" ends with a great solo full of fuzzy tone and bent notes to crack Carlos Santana's skull-- but mostly, Frusciante and principal collaborator Josh Klinghoffer (of Bicycle Thief) indulge in the tricks and tracks of a full-fledged studio, building sparkly platforms for mercurial thoughts and snatches of meaning from whatever instruments and styles seem right in the moment.
"Carvel" opens Shadows with punch, crosshatching urgent, bass-heavy modern rock with a brittle sort of psychedelia that becomes elemental to the record. "Sending a dummy to my God," a newly vocally confident Frusciante sings over filtered synthesizers-- and then everything's brought back for a triumphant rock finish. "Omission" is a cousin to "Californication", its dry acoustic guitar getting help from processed electronics and what might be a mellotron. Frusciante's groggy yorn also melds nicely with Josh Klinghoffer's breezy falsetto.
This record is actually filled with all manner of keys and electronic freakery, particularly on brooding instrumental pieces like "Failure33Object" or "-00Ghost27", but the rambling garage-rock of "This Cold" or the aforementioned "Second Walk" seems like an equally comfortable workspace. Not surprisingly, Frusciante also drifts regularly into the echoing astral stardust-- "The Slaughter" and "In Relief" both zig on cool comet's tails of bittersweet detachment: "I was afraid to be me," he says on the latter. "Be anything you want to be."
Shadows Collide with People, like all of Frusciante's earlier solo experiments, revels in self-indulgence. It's a steady flow of introspection and bent-light reflection. However, with a newfound attention to melody and structure, his hemming and hawing about life, death, and fluorescent guts comes into focus for the rest of us. In a previous time, a track called "Regret", with the only lyric being "I regret my past/ Stay alone," might have been the darkly bruised heart of a destructive, impenetrable sonic diary. Not so in these new shadows. Here, shimmering over a tapestry of orchestral programming, Frusciante's voice cracks and yearns between processed splutters and reverb. Of course, he regrets his past-- he has, after all, come close to death on more than one occasion-- but in "Regret"'s quietly surging melody, his own heartrending singing, and the overall warmth of Shadows Collide with People, what Frusciante's saying has never been more clear.
