Red Hot Chili Peppers double album

Funk-rock masters Red Hot Chili Peppers commenced the North American leg of their world tour in Denver, Colorado, with a major announcement: The band will release another double album this year. Titled Return of the Dream Canteen, it will drop on October 14th and was produced by none other than Rick Rubin. 

Prior to the official announcement, it was singer Anthony Kiedis who broke the news on stage. However, it was swiftly followed up with a short statement on the band’s social media, website and in their newsletter, explaining how it came to fruition. 

The statement reads: “We went in search of ourselves as the band that we have somehow always been. Just for the fun of it we jammed and learned some old songs. Before long we started the mysterious process of building new songs. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the way. Once we found that slip stream of sound and vision, we just kept mining. With time turned into an elastic waistband of oversized underwear, we had no reason to stop writing and rocking.” 

The statement added: “It felt like a dream. When all was said and done, our moody love for each other and the magic of music had gifted us with more songs than we knew what to do with. Well we figured it out. 2 double albums released back to back. The second of which is easily as meaningful as the first or should that be reversed. ‘Return of the Dream Canteen’ is everything we are and ever dreamed of being. It’s packed. Made with the blood of our hearts”.

Per a report in Billboard, the band’s bassist, Flea, said on stage at the show in Denver that the first single from Return of the Dream Canteen is called ‘Tippa My Tongue’. He then took to his personal Instagram and provided another explanation of why the Los Angeles quartet decided to release another album this year. 

Flea said: “The creative process gives life meaning and purpose! We put out a double album about four months ago, called Unlimited Love. I love that album, it felt so good to share it with y’all. Welp, now we are putting out another double album and this one is the absolute best of who we are, I’m am fucking thrilled that we are releasing this shit on October 14. Power to the people. Hope it touches hearts.”

On April 1st, Red Hot Chili Peppers released Unlimited Love, their first with guitarist John Frusciante since 2006’s Stadium Arcadium.

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Kiedis is in “Antoine the Swan” mode throughout the album, revisiting the band’s dormant P-Funk influence implicitly as he sings out of the side of his mouth and explicitly in the “Sir Nose D Voidoffunk” vocal pitch-shifting that opens “Afterlife.” In a cute twist, he tries to convince a love interest not to move to Los Angeles in “Bella,” and in “Tippa My Tongue,” he lays down a smoove melody, singing that he’s here to “pull your hair” in a way that is somehow incredibly sexy, not at all threatening, and a little nostalgic.

While some of these songs can feel regressive or at least undercooked on their own, they’re reframed by the open-hearted sadness that takes over the album’s second half. “My Cigarette” interpolates Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface” chorus over a noir bassline from Flea while Frusciante’s guitar rotates like a ceiling fan slowly turning in a hot room. They flash and flap like Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies in “Carry Me Home,” and Kiedis implores the listener not to “lose sight of this generous plan.” Even when they're trying to celebrate, the Chili Peppers sound exhausted by grief. Dead musicians show up often: Layne Stayley, Kiedis’ godfather Sonny Bono, possibly Bradley Nowell. Eddie Van Halen gets a whole song in his honor, though the seasick loneliness of the solo Frusciante rips through the song’s second half is a better tribute to Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel.

As always, the lyric sheet has more proper-noun-driven non-sequiturs than the average Family Guy episode (Who can say what the Dodgers pulling off a double play has to do with the rest of “The Drummer”?), but it’s occasionally possible to hear them as Kiedis’ way of getting around saying what he wants to say directly, or as a way of acknowledging that direct language can't capture the exuberance he feels. When it works, it can be strangely touching. Over percolating clouds of synth in “La La La La La La La La,” he promises his lover, “You’ll be Chong and I’ll be Cheech.” It’s a ridiculous lyric in an otherwise tender song, but its placement suggests that this is simply who he is and singing this way to his audience is a kind of intimacy.

Despite a few experiments—Josh Johnson’s halting sax solo in “My Cigarette,” the minimalist house percussion of “In the Snow”—Dream Canteen doesn’t represent a new direction, nor does it find the band taking the kinds of stylistic risks of the earlier Frusciante and Dave Navarro eras. It can feel chalky, its silliness toned down but not turned off; it makes these songs seem a touch distant and distracted. Not all legendary bands get the chance to age, and of all the groups in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, perhaps only their heroes in Van Halen and Parliament-Funkadelic have had to work as hard at carrying their wackiness into old age. While neither of those bands were able to turn their brilliant live shows into a legacy-consolidating late-career album, the Chili Peppers do have the creative and emotional capability to do so. Like Unlimited Love, Return of the Dream Canteen is not that album, but it does show the funky monks keeping the faith in their unquenchable spirit.

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