Two Miles High Music

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Reunited with producer Rick Rubin and guitarist John Frusciante (both of whom were on board for the 1991's breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik), the Chili Peppers waste no time in burying their last effort, the so-so One Hot Minute. Californication's kickoff cut, "Around the World," swaggers around the room, reacquainting itself with old fans and welcoming new ones. Fuzzy Hendrix vibes and popcorn bass lines still rule the roost, along with a heaping helping of disco magic and some unexpected twists. Ten years ago, Anthony Kiedis and company wouldn't have been comfortable doing revamped new wave ("Parallel Universe") or unpretentious ballads (the acoustic "Road Trippin'"), but such material fits Californication's extra-wide canvas. Except for a few meandering numbers that could have been excised, the Red Hot Chili Peppers succeed and regain their footing on the mountain of adrenalized funk. --Jason Josephes

Remastered title presented on Limited Edition, 180-gram audiophile quality vinyl with original artwork and packaging.

The remastered Under a Blood Red Sky album was originally released in November 1983, and consists of live recordings from three shows on the band's War Tour through Europe and America.

There seem to be two major camps of U2 fans now: Those who dig the early albums (good and sensible people), and those who only like the ones from the '90s, putting everything previous down as "classic rock." But U2 only became a classic rock sort of band in 1984, with The Unforgettable Fire. The real early stuff, from '80 to '83, still comes off as edgy--and it's comparatively ignored. Here's a sampler: Under a Blood Red Sky is from a U.S. tour (1983's) in which U2 still thought of itself as a hungry little band from Ireland--and draws (fairly wisely) from the band's first three albums. There's nary a misstep on the entire disc, although it could stand a few more tracks. --Gavin McNett

Remastered title presented on Limited Edition, 180-gram audiophile quality vinyl with original artwork and packaging.

With their second album, Freaky Styley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were still growing into their oversize funkdafied britches. The polished funk-punk-metal-rap hybrid of later albums was still in its seedling stage here, with the group yet to successfully merge those elements. Still, there's a consistent old-school garage feel. Flea's bass lines, normally in hyperdrive, are clipped and springy, like bare feet hopping on a hot Los Angeles blacktop. Lead singer Anthony Kiedis risks sounding like a parody of the vocal styles he's trying to emulate but commands the songs with every variation of bravado his voice can muster. And finally, the merit of this album could stand solely on the talents of the late guitarist Hillel Slovak, who infuses the tracks with resonating harmonics, psychedelic screeches, and righteous riffs. As disjointed and occasionally amateurish as this album was, it was also groundbreaking and captured the undivided attention of the rock world. --Beth Massa

Savannah, Georgia's BARONESS blow the lid off their cauldron of hall of fame riffs on their first record for Relapse and debut full-length titled Red Album. With a sound built upon a resolute sense of purpose and shaped by hundreds of explosive live shows, BARONESS position themselves at the forefront of heavy music with an epic album that is at once powerful, expressive, confident, and commanding. Red Album sees the band expand its sonic vision; colossal riffs and haunting vocals roll like thunder across epic songs spanning both the intense and the sublime. As the Red Album proves, BARONESS' formidable reputation proceeds them for a reason.

At first glance, Songs for a Blue Guitar appears much like previous Red House Painters albums, meandering and largely self-indulgent. Eight of the album's 11 songs stray over the five-minute mark (with two more than twice that length), and there are the covers of Yes's "Long Distance Runaround," Ric Ocasek's "All Mixed Up," and Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs." Kozelek may have strange taste when it comes to picking out covers ("Silly Love Songs"?), but on this album he's also showing a commitment and sense of deliberate purpose that I've not heard from him before. Even in the album's centerpiece, the more than 12-minute long "Make Like Paper" that contains a guitar solo that supposedly is responsible for 4AD dropping them, there's not a false move. The song unfolds gently, revealing more facets of itself than the spare instrumentation would seem to allow. The guitar's absolutely delicious Neil Young/Robert Quine/Richard Lloyd crunch doesn't hurt, either. That crunch shows up again in "Long Distance Runaround" and "Silly Love Songs," but the rest of the album is built around a gently arresting acoustic guitar that mirrors the soft-voiced Kozelek. --Randy Silver

Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers calls the band’s first new album in four years, Stadium Arcadium, the most-anticipated album of the spring, "the best thing that we’ve ever done…. There’s this weird kind of sublime, subliminal undercurrent that is suggestive, in a spirited way, of our earliest records." Exuding all the passion, energy and funked-up rock that have made the Red Hot Chili Peppers one of the most popular bands in history, the 2-CD Stadium Arcadium, simply put, will knock your socks off.

Four-year career hiatuses followed by sprawling double-albums could spell trouble for a band of the Chili Peppers' stature: consider they'd originally recorded enough for three discs. The restless, trouble-plagued outfit that helped break alternative rock into the mainstream with a potent fusion of punk 'n' funk in the '80s finds itself two decades on almost completely devoid of the former's energetic abandon, while the latter's effusive rhythms are considerably subdued over the course of this two-hour, 28-track collection. It's not so much that the Peppers have lost their muscular, often uber-macho edge as they have willfully tamed it in service of mature reinvention here. The mellower, often introspective, if no less potent pop ethos that characterized the crossover hit "Under the Bridge" blossoms fully here on tracks like disc one's "Snow," "Wet Sand," and the jazz-cool of "Hey." The title track, "Desecration Smile," and "She Looks To Me" finds them venturing further into laid back pop ballad territory, while the tricky rhythms of "Dani California," "Charlie," and "So Much I" eventually kick into familiar top gear on the pop-savvy "Tell Me Baby" and hip-hop seasoned "Storm in a Teacup." It's not that there's a paucity of musical adventure here ("If" and "Animal Bar" finds them wafting into Floydish neo-psychedelia while "Make You Feel Better" seems to channel no less than Joe Jackson) but that it's delivered with a subtlety--and dare we say it?--tasteful musical restraint that's a stark contrast to the band's early, overly overt nature. There's perhaps too much mid-tempo simmering and reflection going on; like most double-albums it could be focused into a much more compelling single disc. But that seems largely beside the Peppers' hooks-over-histrionics point here: an unlikely record to kick back to, and one that both challenges assumptions and eases the band into middle age with an oft languorous, if undeniably savory groove. --Jerry McCulley

2002 album.

When the Red Hot Chili Peppers first appeared smeared in neon body paint with socks dangling precariously from their wieners, even the most faithful funk-metal convert couldn't have conceived they would be around some 20 years later, carrying on in much the same fashion. Despite a long history of tragedies and personnel upheavals, the California quartet's eighth album is mostly business as usual--and business, as usual, is quite good. The title track, "By the Way," is a powerful, bruised piece of slap-bass and intermediary white-boy rapping. "Universally Speaking" pays sweaty, soulful tribute to singer Anthony Kiedis's hometown of Detroit. And "Lemon Trees on Mercury" sounds eerily like it could have been lifted from 1984's Freaky Styley. The band's reliable eclectic side, meanwhile, surfaces on the Latin-flavored "Cabron" and moody "Venice Queen." But the biggest surprise is "Tear," a masterful homage to the Beach Boys that suggests the Chili Peppers' perpetual state of arrested development may someday lift. --Aidin Vaziri