Red Hot Chili Peppers The Getaway

When Josh Klinghoffer replaced longtime guitarist John Frusciante in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the alt-rock band’s first album with him, 2011’s I’m With You, came off like a conscious effort to replicate the way the band sounded with Frusciante, with mostly mediocre results. Five years later, the band has ditched veteran producer Rick Rubin (who’d produced all of their albums since 1991 breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik) in favor of working with Danger Mouse (who also co-wrote and performs on several songs), and very little on The Getaway sounds like it’s directly trying to channel Frusciante.

Instead of foregrounding a different guitar sound from Klinghoffer, though, the band has downplayed the guitars on many of the songs, with Flea’s dexterous bass playing, along with string sections, horns and synths, dominating at various times. It’s not a complete departure—Anthony Kiedis’ vocals are pretty much unchanged, as are his often nonsensical lyrics, and the more guitar-driven songs, including “We Turn Red,” “The Longest Wave” and “Detroit,” sound fairly familiar. Around half the songs on the album still end up in the mushy mid-tempo middle ground that has been the Chili Peppers’ standard mode for years now.

But there’s enough going on in the other half, including the slow, atmospheric title track, the booming, bass-heavy lead single “Dark Necessities,” the full-on ’80s-style dance-rock of “Go Robot” and the piano-driven “Sick Love” (featuring Elton John), for The Getaway to qualify as genuinely new, and that’s something the Chili Peppers haven’t been able to boast in quite some time.