I'm With You- Red Hot Chili Peppers

Twenty-eight years, ten albums and one new guitarist- all adds up to Californian coasting

What exactly do you do when the band member credited with not one but two creative rebirths in your history leaves for good? It’s a question that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are hoping to answer as Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith and Flea are joined by new axeman Josh Klinghoffer.

With John Frusciante seemingly tired of playing the kind of venues an album title like Stadium Arcadium suggests, the remaining members surely ignored all sane advice at time to continue, bringing in Klinghoffer, bizarrely a former collaborator on the elder’s solo work. The advantage is that it lowers expectations after the gargantuan double Arcadium, and thankfully the band don’t disappoint at this level: they just don’t surpass what was expected.

It all starts well enough- “Monarchy Of Roses” opens with garage squalling noise, then set against an airbrushed, keyboard-drenched chorus- it’s a wonderful musical oxymoron. It also highlights the improvement in Kiedis’ voice after appear to give up the ghost completely after the last tour’s Reading finale. He sounds reenergised and ready to go, despite his still-woeful approach to lyric writing (“Did I Let You Know” finds him actually using the word “Mozambique-y” to rhyme with “cheeky”). It's he who soars on the likes of “Annie Wants A Baby” and the soulful and damaged “Meet Me At The Corner”.

Flea also hits something of a purple patch too, taking the reigns with his four strings to an almost megalomaniac level. He shows far more songwriting maturity with his new instrument of choice, piano. Having gone away to learn his craft properly, his playing isn’t about to rival Matt Bellamy, but it adds a deep, atmospheric dynamic to the latter half of the record, allowing slower tracks like Police Station to really fizz. Best of all is the much-discussed Brendan’s Death Song, a tribute to the late promoter who won the band an essential early gig. It slowly builds from nothing, and completes the band’s transition from socked-cocks frat boys to the fathers and husbands they’ve become. All four members mesh perfectly, and it stands as one of the band’s most personal, emotional songs since Under The Bridge caught onto something in the air in 1991.

Just from that there’s enough to justify their continuation, it’s just a shame everything else is so utterly bland. The likes of “Dance, Dance, Dance”, “Ethiopia” and single “The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie” are bloodless and serious, free of the fun that powered them through their occasional lack of real musicianship. At the other end of the scale, “Happiness Loves Company” is almost sickeningly jaunty, both problems mean that it never really feels like a Chilis album.

Which brings us to the white elephant in the studio: Josh Klinghoffer. His experimental take of stadium guitars is certainly a welcome move, and when he reveals a real riff, it’s knocked out of the park. But all too often it sounds like he noodling away to himself in a completely different room to the others. All too often his guitars squeal along on their own on the likes of “Even You, Brutus?” and just does not work.

All of which leads to a sense of a new beginning, it’s directionless nature suggesting a debut album if they weren’t one of the biggest bands in the world. If Klinghoffer can reign in his avant-garde tendancies, then they could still be “with” us for a while to come.

3/5

Best Tracks:
Brendan's Death Song
Meet Me At The Corner
Monarchy Of Roses