Summer jams? In THIS climate?

[Video]
[3.78]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: As a person of Southern Californian extraction born between 1985 and 2000, I cannot hope to be impartial about the Red Hot Chili Peppers in any regard. I’ll listen to anything they put out, with zero expectations that it’ll even be “good.” They’re beyond things like that. “Black Summer” is the kind of song you make when you’ve fully abandoned being a conventionally good rock band. It’s a four-minute prog-pop epic, adorned with Flea’s characteristic bass tone to give it a thin veneer of funkiness, but otherwise an incredibly self-serious paean to the So-Cal ethos. It’s grand and sweeping and possible unlistenable, but it endears itself to me anyways. In what is nearly their fortieth year of existence, the Red Hot Chili Peppers still have got it, for a certain and indescribable value of “it.”
[7]

Edward Okulicz: From time to time, my nemeses RHCP come up with a song that overwhelms my knee-jerk dislike of the very notion of Anthony Kiedis, Anthony Kiedis’s lyrics, Anthony Kiedis’s voice, everything. This isn’t one of those, but I like some parts of it. Whatever weirdo mixing Rick Rubin has done to the song that makes Anthony Kiedis sound like he’s putting on a funny accent hasn’t done any damage to the lovely tone of John Frusciante’s guitar and the backing vocals are well-placed. Better than the topline, anyway. They’re a rock radio and legacy act now, this song won’t hang around long enough to even make me annoyed about its existence. With their ubiquity gone, maybe my simmering distaste is too.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: You might’ve thought, after all these years, that the Peppers and producer Rick Rubin couldn’t possibly get more dull, but they’re back to prove you wrong.
[1]

Micha Cavaseno: I am so deeply and profoundly confused by this strange quasi-Celtic accent that Anthony is affecting here. It speaks to what’s consistently held this band back, which isn’t Frusciante running back and forth to this band for paychecks to keep up a household income in an L.A. that’s ever demanding financially. Nor is it just the fact that they’re getting older, more listless, and a lot less inspired. No, it’s that whereas the Chili Peppers once felt like a band who could always take confounding and ill-advised detours stylistically, now they are effortlessly tamed and shamed. Musicianship has never been a major issue for them, as their roster at minimum has had one of the most beloved rhythm sections in mainstream rock from the time I was in diapers. But they seem so toothless and uncertain every time they come out for another vie to re-establish themselves. “Black Summer” is your typical Kiedisian plea on behalf of the environment, but the frailty of his delivery speaks to the old-man impotency that the band’s being forced to confront in other areas of their lives. In a way, it’s appropriate given that the Chili Peppers have been around for almost 40 years, and I can’t say that anyone’s heard them whenever they plead about climate change. Who could “rock out” in the face of that much a sense of uselessness, after all?
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I assume everyone will talk about Kiedis’s affected accent and how it makes him sound terminally stagey, but what I can’t get past is Kiedis’s uncannily heavy autotune making him sound terminally like Adam Levine. And Levine — god, I can’t believe I’m saying this, I apologize to you and also myself — might even be better here. At least he wouldn’t hold back as much as this does.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Vocal processing/production/etcetcetc is, like any tool, neither inherently good or bad. But god, Anthony Kiedis sounds fucking weird here, and not in any sort of interesting or aesthetically effective way, in a “wait can he not sing any more and they’re trying to cover that up?” kind of way. Sounding like Peter Paparazzo goin’ country with Bobby Bottleservice was possibly not the intended effect? It’s less noticeable on the chorus, to the extent where I start wondering if the verse stuff is a deliberate choice after all — the way the awful lines about “China’s on the dark side of the moon” and “sailing on a censorship” are clearly deliberate too — and not just a desperate fix. But if so… not all choices are good!
[2]

Alfred Soto: I had no idea China was on the dark side of the moon, nor did I suspect Anthony Kiedis could sing in what he thinks is his idea of a brogue. The bass/guitar syncopation impresses as ever.
[5]

Oliver Maier: No idea how to rationalise Frusciante’s weird accent here, except perhaps that his return to the Chilis was contingent on their new album being a concept piece about a pirate from Dublin. Still, had he chosen not to spurn Dani California for a Galway Girl, this would be a dud regardless.
[4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: As lively as you’d expect for a song called “Black Summer” released on February 4. 
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