update on the Frusciante album - of course it's great! This is his big indulgent studio album and it comes off really well. I appreciate everything about his solo stuff from the 'less is more' ethic to the fact that he is answering to a different muse than his group work. It's more polished than 'Ten Days' but I have a soft spot for the endless self-overdubbing, he has got the idiosyncratic songwriting moxy to pull it off
But I think right now this is even better for me:
Who would've thought the popularity of the Chili Peppers (whom popular opinion holds to be a gaggle of gurning, shirtless Californian twats) could be responsible for an album like this? A home-recorded collection of avant-garde, dissonant demons from 1992 and 1994 - this is up there with the reclusive greats like Skip Spence and Syd Barrett, except Frusciante is even more abstract in his style. Where Skip Spence was a mess and Syd was just innately shot-away, Frusciante is not of that generation and at this time was a crack and heroin addict with his head tightly screwed on. The songs/instrumentals are warts-and-all, almost ignore melody (but not really) and sound like they were written/recorded on the spot. If this is the case, his four-track tape machine (my favourite recording tool incidentally - because it forces you to make the most of the space you have) captures and preserves these moments of torment at their least inhibited. These recordings do not answer to gravity and have their own laws, and it's good that Frusciante came out the other end to use his talents and 'evolve'... but he'll never write like this again.
DIGuT