Laut.de
10th July 2004, from Laut Magazine (Germany)
One may speculate, what the Warner Music responsible thought at that moment, when John Frusciante inaugurated to him, that he’s got further 6 (!) albums besides “Shadows Collide With People” up his sleeve, which have to be published till the end of the year. Legal Steps? Bodily harm? Drop hatchet?
On the other side you don’t treat deserving people like this, and since Frusciante is also the guitarist of the Warner-Cash Cow Red Hot Chili Peppers, they decided to place his 6 solo-freak-outs in the shelves. On the quiet and without big promotion, of course. There’s not much, which could be more unimportant to Frusciante.
This guy, and that shows “The Will To Death” in a terrific perfection, has taken off into higher spheres in the meantime, which are unfathomable to the average, like the finesses in football of a Zinedine Zidane. You just sit there, motionless. Astonished. Admiring. Worshipping the whole way of his simple way of approach to the album: scrubbing beginning chords, verse, here a break which is running contrary, there a wall of guitars, with rattling, an ascent in the tempo, throttle, echo device on, falsetto, chorus, freak out. Structures, which cannot be found with some bands on a whole album, Frusciante accommodates in a 4 minute song. Then a quick title, “Time Runs Out”, probably?
Sounds good, okay, finished, new song.
Something like that is how the everyday life of Frusciante has to be, of whom his colleague Flea has once jokingly said, it wouldn’t surprise him, if John did not have an answer to the question, who American president is. But he really doesn’t have time for politics; therefore others have to worry about. All he’s concerned about is arts. The mere cover aesthetics, a reminiscence to all of the rock-crimes of the late seventies from Rush to Pink Floyd announces a hard digestible hippie-excursion.
Actually “The Will To Death” leads us deep down to the small, dark room of Frusciante, to his own personal cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Like the main character of the silent film classic, Frusciante meanwhile is matured to the skilled hypnotist, whom his audience is helplessly at mercy. With every listening the songs grip you harder on your neck, some even tyrannize you because of the sheer abundance of the composition (incredible: the piano-opera “The Mirror”). There is no escape from the claws of the despot. Songs, full with ingenious song-turns and pure madness.
When Frusciante after a moderate beginning suddenly screams the lines “I can’t wait for life” in “A Loop” as if this would be his last song right before his waiting execution, you can see the widened pupils of the confused master in front of you, who approximates his eccentric songwriter idols with enormous steps.
But also the recording standard ensures that, with which John beams himself back to the year 1971: 16-track mixer, ancient synthies, no computers, no studio guests. Only John and the ominous congenial unknown Josh Klinghoffer.
Thus, the result sounds much more rough, mystical and druggie than the predecessor, the producers even don’t save us from historic games with soundchannels (voice right, music left), (“Time Runs Out”, “The Will To Death”). From Johns trusting pop-excursions like “Song To Sing When I’m Lonely” are partly only “Wishing” and “Unchanging” left. But he rather performs weird lalala-singings and spacy guitar-riffs (“Loss”). His melodies conceal behind the never aimless inclination to experimentation and arrangements of distant times.
If Frusciante would have been a bandmate of Neil Young, he (Neil Young) would have loved to put “Far Away” to his “Harvest”-album. That John can also play Youngs “Heart Of Gold” in a perfect way we finally know likewise.
Even if I’m not for a long time suspicious to the frusciantemania in the local editorial office, the subsequent questions remain open: How shall this continue? Which way does John Frusciante would like to go? This guy is anyway the same guy who records fun songs with his main band like the ska-track “On Mercury”. But the fun ends within his solo albums. Here are existential subjects at stake, the suffering and pain of a superstar, who despite all his achievements somehow stayed a loner: “Laughter is an ugly friend of mine”, he once reveals, or in the majestic closing song: “The will to death is what keeps me alive”.
To be continued.
