Well here comes the major revision… Got some big, big exams coming up the next month, so revision is really needed, not that I’m not doing any… Just at the right time comes Stadium Arcadium, the new album from the Chilis. Not only is it perfectly timed for revision purposes, as it weighs in at almost exactly 2 hours long, being a sizeable block to revision to do, it is actually a very decent album. At first, I was a bit overwhelmed with amount of content (as in songs) on the album. I generally find that with longer albums (I’m thinking of The Wall in particular here) I do not listen to all of the album, instead I just listen to normally the first part of it or selected songs, due to time restrictions and such alike. But this isn’t the way the album is supposed to be listened to… If it were, then it wouldn’t be a concept album (still specifically The Wall here…) and anyway, listening to the album in a one-er makes it sound generally better, though it doesn’t make sense, but technically, this is the way the album is supposed to be listened to…
So back to Stadium Arcadium, yeah, it’s long but who gives a s*@t, its a great album so far… You can really just listen to it starting at any point and it will sound good, mostly because I haven’t heard it enough times to know it any better, aside from perhaps the first few tracks… In general, it has the same kinda feel as the more modern Chili albums, as opposed to the old pre ‘One Hot Minute’ albums which were considerably more funklike and thus less mainstream in the way that things go, noting Blood Sugar Sex Magik as the big obvious exception… It has a more mellow, relaxed and chilled feel to it compared to their recent offerings, some of the songs do sound similar, notably 2 of them that I thought were similar to Californication (the song) and Venice Queen (a bit like the start of ‘Desecration Smile’), but listening closer, its relatively obvious that they’re different… Certain songs on this album are really excellent and stand out from the backdrop (not that it should be called that…). The one that I’m thinking in particular is ‘Strip My Mind,’ a very chilled song that gets better every time you listen, even the preview on iTunes is very listenable albeit 30 seconds long. One other noticeable thing about this album is the more emphasis on guitar solos. Before, the solos wouldn’t be so vibrant and necessarily obvious, but now it has changed. I read somewhere that Frusciante took ideas from Hendrix (or something along those lines) for the guitar for this album. It really makes a nice noticable difference, look out for ‘Hey’, ‘Strip My Mind’ and ‘Readymade’. Some other songs stand out on this album just through something different especially ‘Snow ((Hey Oh))’ with the intricate verse vocal rythym and chorus chord progression and ‘Death Of A Martian’ which has something akin to ‘Paranoid Android’ with the different sections to the song, especially the last minute and a half…
Overall this is a great album, highly listenable. Possibly more difficult to get into than ‘Californication’ or ‘By The Way’ but its up there with them. Will be an immense album just for revision purposes and even better when I see them live this Summer.