Red Hot Chili Peppers – By The Way

I didn't think this album was all that good back in the day. I listened to it recently for the first time in years and I've got to say, there are some really nice songs here. Nothing stands out as particularly amazing, but it's generally quite good.

At the very least, the mastering is better than Californication. It still clips in many places but nowhere near as bad as the abomination that is Californications mastering.

In the early days of the Red Hot Chile Peppers – the mid-eighties – the band came across as a bunch of unguided projectiles. The musical mix of punk and funk was exciting but the Group seemed destined to burn quickly, certainly when it was announced that a number of group members to a hefty drug addiction suffered. The album Californication (1999) was, after a turbulent period, a surprisingly restrained and consistent problem with a reborn group, whose members by all the problems seemed to have grown closer together. The successor By The Way is of the same high level. The funk-back background you can still hear in the smooth interplay, but otherwise Red Hot Chile Peppers become a real band, with uitgearrangeerde songs and beautiful harmony vocals. The energy is still present but where the band used to be regularly flew off the road, she knows now to master. Red Hot Chile Peppers is one of those rare bands, which with the passage of years just gets better.

just got this today, new vinyl- shrinkwrapped. must admit mine deffo sounded tinny 1st go. Absolutely no ticks or pops whatsoever through all 4 sides though. Could not find 1 copy of any of the 3 original chilli vinyl pressings I'm after in UK so had to go for what I hoped was a genuine re-issue. Dunno why I did not think to look at their official site 1st to see if that might be the place for something certain to be genuine-ish on vinyl. I think, for the moment, I could of done worse than I have :)

10/10 for By The Way, outstanding, by far the highlight of this great album (all of rhcp's albums are brilliant) and the zephyr song is very good and catchy, another good album needed for a good music collection.