In the early days of the Red Hot Chili Peppers - in the mid-1980s - the band came across as a bunch of unguided missiles. The musical mix of punk and funk was exciting, but the group seemed destined to burn up quickly, especially when it became known that a number of members of the group suffered from a serious drug addiction. After a turbulent period, the album Californication (1999) was a surprisingly
… modest and consistent piece of work by a reborn group, whose members seemed to have grown closer together due to all the problems. The successor By The Way is of the same high level. You can still hear the funk background in the smooth interplay, but otherwise Red Hot Chili Peppers has become a real pop group, with arranged songs and beautiful harmony vocals. The energy is still there, but where the band used to fly off the bend, it now manages to control itself. Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of those rare bands that only gets better over the years. (MS)more