Stadium Arcadium

It overflows with the kind of music the Chili Peppers do best: a physical, often psychedelic mix of spastic bass-slapped funk and glistening alt-rock spiritualism. Only they've never sounded this good as musicians.

The supersized culmination of the Chili Peppers' artistic journey. [Jun 2006, p.102]

Represents a career high for the Chili Peppers. [Jun 2006, p.106]

A mature showcase of concentrated power with riotous groove jams, super-sized hooks and transcendent vocal arrangements.

Stadium Arcadium ensures that graying Lollapalooza-era fans, indie teens, and rowdy lunkheads will all be satisfied.

Stadium Arcadium has too many midtempo tracks and, in the manner of U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind, is more of a summation of the Peppers' career than a step forward. But the band is still capable of surprises.

The music brims with a creative euphoria almost shocking for a band that has been around since Ronald Reagan's first term.

It's the sound of a band on a roll. [Jun 2006, p.110]

The whole thing seems like a guided tour through the band's different incarnations.

For anyone who legitimately enjoyed Blood Sugar, and think that they might actually want to purchase this thing, Stadium is unquestionably Red Hot Chili Peppers’ finest release since.

Somewhere along the line the Chilis got sophisticated on our asses.

This is virile, excited music. [Jun 2006, p.146]

The bare-bone production combined with the relentless march of songs gives Stadium Arcadium the undeniable feel of wading through the demos for a promising project instead of a sprawling statement of purpose; there's not enough purpose here for it to be a statement.

Pity that "Jupiter," disc one, mostly falls flat.

At least when the bassist ruled they livened up this overworked dynamic with beats. Now they tax it with tunes.

Frusciante's guitar work... almost single-handedly saves the project, but not quite.

Stadium Arcadium boasts virtuoso musicianship, lustrous arrangements and unpredictable flourishes, but inside all this breathtaking sonic architecture it is strangely empty.

Attempting such an ambitious concept in an age of diminished attention spans should no doubt be applauded, but overstretching itself in a stab at immortality, "Stadium Arcadium" marks a step backwards from 2002's "By The Way".

Neither disjointed embarrassment of riches à la The Beatles nor conceptual magnum opus like The Wall, Stadium Arcadium is two hours of sometimes middling, sometimes masterful, mostly pleasurable mainstream rock.

Stadium Arcadium is perfectly capable and occasionally ingratiating, but whatever goodwill it musters up is trounced by its redundancy.

Even the "there's a great album hiding in here!" cliché doesn't really apply, since if you conducted ten trials of picking fourteen songs at random, you'd end up with ten albums of near equal mediocrity.

Whereas poor production values and drug-fueled exuberance once excused their George Clinton worship, 20 years on, in Rick Rubin's sterile environment, the band sounds like they're in jamband training camp, filling in all the empty spaces with blippityblap reminders of Flea's virtuosity and John Frusciante's desire to use every effects pedal ever invented.

The trouble with virtuosity is that it doesn't always translate into songcraft, and the absence of even one hum-it-on-the-way-home track here raises the old questions again: Does this band even make sense? Are punk energy and funk grooves music's peanut-butter-and-chocolate or its oatmeal-and-sardines? And what's Anthony Kiedis talking about, anyway?