What has happened with Red Hot Chilli Peppers? Without having delivered, in recent times, the most exciting albums in their history, they now dominate the stages, doubling capacity, like this Tuesday at the Olympic Stadiumwhich replaced the usual Palau Sant Jordi at the Barcelona stop on the tour ‘unlimited love’. Voracious and transgenerational appetite to see this Californian colossus, creator of a fibrous sound label at the cost of blending hard rock and funk, and holder of ‘hits’ scattered over three long decades.
display of strengththat of the Peppers, who even without selling all the paper, summoned 49,000 attendees (according to the promoter Live Nation) in the middle of the week of ‘spring’ hegemony, after filling La Cartuja, in Seville, on Thursday. The stadium concert returned with themthree years after the last one that venue lived in full format, before the covid-19 that of Ed Sheeran in June 2019. Large format rock preceded by the performance of a powerful rapper, New Yorker Nas, who prepared the ground with a burly ‘set’, backed by a ‘dj’ and an overwhelming drummer, pulling numbers like ‘Made you look’ and ‘ One mic’.
Improvising in the stadium
Red Hot Chili Peppers manage to continue transmitting a feeling of band having fun playing and that lends itself to improvising, an exercise not very common in a stadium, where everything is guessed in millimeters. To open the session, ‘jam’ singing, loosening muscles and greasing the pieces. The image on the screens John frusciantethe guitarist and prodigal son (and they’ve already gone twice), was widely applauded, although we already know that the four workers work here, and the bass of flee, with his pranks and his ‘slapping’, marked territory from minute one. From there to ‘Can’t stop’ and, following the welcome band, ‘Dani California’ and ‘Around the world’, songs from those turn-of-the-century albums that once added new fans.
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Anthony Kiedis, bare-chested Iggy Pop, is a singer endowed with a miraculous sensitivity despite the forceful nature of the ‘peppers’ sound, and he knows how to sound forceful without having to shout. That was appreciated in the new songs, richer in nuances and modulations, like that ‘Black summer’ with lyrical covid connotations. In another of those pieces, ‘The heavy wing’, the one who took the lead was Frusciante, an otherwise overwhelming guitarist in his forays down the mast.
Unmistakable groove
The recent work reserved some spaces of greater serenity in the middle of the concert, although everything the group plays makes it theirs in an unmistakable way. Their floating groove, with a settled alchemy between the four members, transmitted tension to a repertoire that advanced in the final stretches pulling ‘Californication’, a warning cry of Western decadence with its quotes from Cobain and Bowie. And other more popular cards that the Estadi submitted: ‘give it away’praising material generosity, and the half-time ‘Under the bridge’, a reminder of the old days, days of loss and drugs, now happily overcome.