Sometimes, the only way to move forward is to take a step back. For the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that means abandoning the direction of 2002's extremely subdued, harshly reviewed By the Way and returning to the grand alterna-funk glory with which they dominated the '90s. Stadium Arcadium is a remarkably elucidatory title: The Peppers are back to making commanding, stadium-deserving rock, and they sound as comfortable there as in an Arcadian paradise.
Stadium Arcadium is a big album, figuratively and literally. Over 122 minutes, divided into the blue Jupiter disc (to the consternation of astronomers everywhere) and the red Mars, the Peppers revisit the diverse, ever-majestic themes from their past. Stadium Arcadium recalls both of their mega-selling masterworks, 1991's exhilarating Blood Sugar Sex Magik and 1999's more mature Californication.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Jupiter's opening 1-2 punch, with the vintage West Coast vibe of 'Dani California' and the calmer, more musically complex 'Snow (Hey Oh),' which brilliantly marries guitarist John Frusciante's quick surf-rock riff, bassist Flea's slow and sturdy plucking and a high-pitched brass backing section.
The Peppers have been the standard-bearers of California cool for so long, it's easy to overlook that none of the band's members'vocalist Anthony Kiedis (Michigan), Flea (Australia), drummer Chad Smith (Minnesota) and Frusciante (New York)'are originally from there. Capturing Los Angeles from the view of excited new arrivals rather than complacent natives has colored the Peppers' work before, but in Stadium Arcadium they reach further back.
'Especially in Michigan' is one of the album's strongest tracks and conveys a cosmic, U2-like wistfulness in line with the ostensible reference to Kiedis' childhood. If his lyrics are still not particularly comprehensible, he does display a more developed, poetic poignancy with lines like 'Cry me a future where the revelations run amok / Ladies and gentlemen / Lions and tigers come running just to steal your luck.'
Of course, that isn't to say that Kiedis' nearly dadaist songwriting of old is totally gone. On 'So Much I' he sings, 'Next stop on the KLM / Two lips and a sturdy stem / A funny thing always happens when I get a heavy jam / I'm gonna turn it into Hydrogen!' (A little research shows that KLM is the national airline of the Netherlands'??of course.)
Nor has the band lost the ability to play their straight funk-punk from the Mother's Milk-era and before, as evidenced by tracks like 'Storm in a Teacup.' While on that song Kiedis does tells someone 'Come on come baby let me show you what I'm talkin' 'bout / You try to be a lady but you're walking like a sauerkraut,' it's worth noting that, overall, he's more respectful to women than ever on Stadium Arcadium.
The most notable example is on the superb 'Hard to Concentrate,' when he takes his new, reverent outlook to literal lengths by singing, 'Do you want me to show up for duty / And serve this woman and honor her beauty'?
By the time Stadium Arcadium's dreamlike 28th track 'Death of a Martian' rolls around and Kiedis declares that 'the nova is over,' the listener has been inundated with years of fantastic Peppers incarnations along with a few new ones, to a supremely satisfying effect. They've never sounded more capable of rocking stadiums.
