From their multi-platinum peaks to their sad, desperate lows, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have always aspired toward a humble goal: to make you feel like you’re in the practice space with them, zoning out and goofing around, watching three exceptionally talented musicians and their extremely jacked singer spitballing ideas and keeping each other entertained. It’s an intimate bond that has fostered an intense connection among their fans. But it’s also opened them up for harsh scrutiny. When a relationship is built on these simple pleasures—jammin’ and rappin’ and slappin’ the bass, cramming your lyrics with cartoonish sex talk and rock history allusions, calling your reunion album Unlimited Love and really meaning it—it’s easy to feel you’ve outgrown it.
If audiences have sometimes felt that way, imagine how John Frusciante must feel. He first joined the Chili Peppers in the late 1980s, a teenage virtuoso helping shape his favorite group’s horned-up funk-rock into something more melodic. He quit in 1992 while touring their commercial breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik, then returned in 1998 as the mystical, fragile heart of their most fruitful period. Even if you don’t like the band, you can at least acknowledge that his inventive solos, layered vocal harmonies, and wide-ranging influences have always been attempts to make the music more artful and ambitious (or, at the very least, more like the Cure).
Unlimited Love—the Chili Peppers’ first album in six years and first with Frusciante in 16—recaptures their natural camaraderie. At once live-sounding and restrained, it’s Frusciante’s first record with the band where none of the songs sound remotely like anything on mainstream radio, which maybe speaks more to the times than the group’s efforts. The last time Frusciante recorded with them, on 2006’s double album Stadium Arcadium, their riffy, pile-driving anthems felt at home alongside hits by fellow, enduring Gen X peers like Foo Fighters and Green Day. On Unlimited Love, which arrives nearly 40 years into the band’s career and makes no concessions to any prevailing trends of popular music in 2022, the Chili Peppers sound like no one but themselves.
In fact, they sound a lot like themselves. After testing the waters with replacement guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who debuted on 2011’s I’m With You, and new collaborator Danger Mouse, who produced 2016’s The Getaway, the goal here is to act like no time has passed, settling back into their old magic and maybe finding some winners to slot between the hits in their live set. Grungy first single “Black Summer” and glittery funk throwback “She’s a Lover” should do the trick, but even mid-tempo cuts like “Bastards of Light” find satisfying payoffs from the moody, patient songcraft they attempted during their tentative past decade in the wilderness. As for the lyrics, there’s a song that seems to be about traffic in Los Angeles; another about how good the music was in the ’70s. There are some veiled references to aging and grief and climate change. There’s a chorus that promises (threatens?) that Anthony Kiedis’ “aquatic mouth dance is waiting for you”; there’s another where he argues how cool it would be if the great apes could roam free.
It’s nothing new, but that’s kind of the point. Every decision seems to be pulled from a dog-eared manual of how this band operates at its best. To their credit, everything still plays to their strengths, from Rick Rubin’s stark production to the overcrowded tracklist, like all their best albums—long and rangey, stacked with crowd singalongs near the beginning and woolier, destined-to-be fan favorites at the end. Along the way, you’ll hear all the trademarks of those old chestnuts: intricate, popping bass from Flea, climactic snare thwacks from Chad Smith, and some rhymes from Kiedis that I’ll do everyone a favor by not quoting out of context. (If I must: “Please, love, can I have a taste?/I just wanna lick your face.”)
As for Frusciante’s contributions, it’s a pleasure hearing him play rock guitar again, after a decade mostly occupied by left-field electronic experiments. I have sometimes gotten the sense he views his role in the band like a logic problem—a challenge to expand their limited vista without completely overhauling it, once going so far as to filter all his solos through a modular synth rig—and his innovations here are humble but rewarding. I look forward to reading the Guitar World interview that explains how he recreated Adrian Belew’s distant-seagull slide sound from “Matte Kudasai” in “Not the One,” or how he landed on the beautiful, jazzy register for his vocal harmonies in the muted chorus of “Aquatic Mouth Dance.” He has cited early psychedelic bands like the Move as an influence, and the dry, chunky crush of his solos in “The Great Apes” and “The Heavy Wing” hits with fresh inspiration.
In the latter song, one of the best here, Frusciante elbows Kiedis out of the way to sing the chorus himself—a move he last attempted on “Dosed,” a tender highlight from 2002’s By the Way. That album arrived during the peak of Frusciante’s creative powers in the band, after he brushed off the dust from his comeback and took fuller control of their sound. Like last time, some 20 years ago, there’s apparently a lot more where this came from: The band claims they’ve already got enough material for a follow-up, and the worst moments on Unlimited Love have the feeling of jams sculpted into songs as quickly as possible, while everyone’s still giddy and no one has the chance to raise concerns like, “Haven’t we written this before?” or “Should we try a take where Anthony doesn’t sing like a pirate?”
Granted, this impulsive nonchalance has always been part of the Chili Peppers’ appeal. The other day at the bar I found myself defending their music to some friends. I gestured vaguely toward the hooks, the confidence, the sadness below the surface, the grain of Frusciante’s playing. It was difficult. Growing up as a classic rock kid in the late ’90s, their songs just so happened to be the ones that caught my attention on MTV, at public pools, in CD players in my friends’ basements. I was mostly drawn to the mood—the feeling that these fun, dangerous, frequently shirtless dudes from California were letting me hang with them for 70-minute intervals.
Blocking out its sentimental appeal, the music on Unlimited Love is tested by familiar pressures of late-era releases from successful rock bands: balancing the risk of self-parody with the need to live up to people’s nostalgia, knowing they’ve already written the music they’ll be remembered for but still wanting to keep the ride going. Like a lot of these types of albums, Unlimited Love is competent and comforting—its creators rarely try to grab your attention but never totally embarrass themselves either. (Well, maybe a little during the rap verses in “Poster Child.”) If you’re not on board, then there’s little reason to hop on now. But if you are, or ever have been, then one day you might find yourself like me, looking into some inquisitive, unsympathetic eyes, trying to articulate what you recommend about this ridiculous, once-radical band. Unlimited Love won’t be the first thing that springs to mind—but that doesn’t mean you won’t be glad it exists.
