Red Hot Chili Peppers to release second double-album of 2022, "Return of the Dream Canteen" 10/14/22

What a great surprise this all is. They’re having a hell of a year. I personally loved Unlimited Love and had the pleasure of seeing them put on a fantastic show in London. Can’t quite believe we’re getting another double album already! Hopefully another great sounding AAA vinyl release as well.

 

Sad, I missed out on that one. Now it's gonna cost you 200 bucks and upwards if you wanna buy it, ugh...

 

I’ve seen a lot of people talk a lot of talk about this supposed autotuning but I haven’t heard it myself, I haven’t seen anyone be able to point out where it supposedly is in these new recordings, and autotune seems to be against their entire ethos as a recording outfit.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that there simply is no autotune, just a lot of people parroting the uninformed opinion of one person on the internet. I could believe there is vocal comping, that’s done all the time. But there’s a big difference between that and autotune.

 

I remember the absolute HUGE amount of exposure that One Hot Minute got when I was a kid and when my stepdad had the CD I gave it a listen and couldn't help but wonder what all the hype was about.

I'm always excited when groups release new music but can't help but to wonder why it's always the acts I don't care for that are the ones who do it.

 

The thing you're missing here is that when autotuning edits are done right, you don't hear them.

The fact you haven't heard any autotuning is meaningless. Evidence of absence is just absence of evidence.

 

They did?! I better make fifty threads about it.

 

I mean, right off the bat with the first song. Black Summer has some of the most over-the-top Autotune he’s ever used.

I don’t particularly care, personally, I think he’s such a core sound to the band, and if he can’t really sing anymore, this is better than nothing. But the whole “everything was analog” story the band keeps repeating is complete nonsense.

 

Well, at least the album cover is better than Unlimited Love. There was at least effort put in.

UL was at least better than The Getaway or the last two albums with John, but it’s still average at best. It had a few solid cuts, sure, but it just feels like almost any other album they’ve done with John since BSSM-a middling at best attempt to recapture past glory by a creative partnership that ran its course a long time ago. Even the one album that did genuinely try to do something different was still basically a John solo album with Anthony on vocals.

Could the album be good? Sure, stranger things have happened then this band finally putting out another decent record. Hell, Metallica’s put out a decent record in my lifetime, I sure as hell didn’t expect that to happen. But my expectations are where they should be-very, very low.

 

No unreleased songs in Denver last night and the US tour wraps up two days after the new record is set to be released.

At this point they have no choice but to dedicate the majority of the set to the hits. They’re too deep into their career to do it any other way. Which is great for 60k+ stadium crowds who want to hear ‘Under the Bridge’, but maybe a bit disappointing for longtime fans hoping for more deep cuts.

Last night’s show was a lot of fun (been waiting a long time to bring my son to his first concert) and it’s great that they occasionally sprinkle in stuff like ‘Emit Remmus’, ‘Sir Psycho Sexy’, ‘If You Have to Ask’, etc. But a few of those each night would be even better!

I totally lost my sh!t when I saw them in 2006 and they played ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’.

 

That would be a restroom break for me. Now, if they did "Sikamikaniko," I'd be all in.

 

The entire idea that Anthony’s vocals are autotuned is based on the supposed “fact” that it is plainly audible, no? Everyone came to the conclusion that autotune was used because somebody could clearly hear it? But now nobody can hear it, and it’s still there anyway?

 

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new album coming out?

 

Boo this man!

For real though, ‘Sikamikanico’ is great. They played it once with Josh in 2019.

 

Do you even know what autotune is?

 

There’s also that weird pitch shift in “Zephyr Song”.

I don’t really care if studio magic is used, but at least be honest about it. Anybody who’s heard the studio records and then heard Anthony sing live can hear it clear as day. Who are you trying to appeal to, those old guys who hate anything digital or modern? They’re a vocal minority in the grand scheme of things.

More than anything, my issue is just how increasingly phoned in Anthony’s work has become over the past 20+ years. You’ll have a song where the band is rocking out, really bringing it, and then you get this overly mannered vocal that really brings it down. I’m thinking of stuff like “Goodbye Hooray” or “One Way Traffic”, where if he really brought some fire, those songs could have been something.

 

I'm not sure I agree. Those guys are nearing 60 years old. If he were to bring something like Sir Psycho Sexy or Special Secret Song, it would just be lame and more than a little disturbing. Quite frankly, those songs were pretty lame and disturbing back in the 80s, too.

 

Yes, a popular vocal correction software produced by Antares, the name is also commonly used in a generic fashion to refer to other vocal correction DSPs such as Melodyne.
What does this have to do with anything that I said?

 

Wow, I wasn't expecting this so soon. Kudos to them for getting this out there so quickly!

 

Just clarifying that you knew it was designed to be used as a pitch correction software. When used right, a listener with even trained ears won't hear it.

It's only noticeable when used heavily or trying to move notes too far from where they were sung. When that happens it tends to create artifacts that the listener can hear.

 

My entire point is that nobody can point out any single moment on the record that is, for certain, the result of digital pitch correction. There’s any number of things that can cause what sounds like a glitch in a vocal track. I don’t have any reason to believe it wasn’t the all-analog affair they claimed it to be, or the “mostly analog” affair that it might be… In any case, I’m not worried much about it either. I didn’t really like any of the songs anyway.

 

Wait, wait, wait… are there people who think Anthony isn’t auto-tuned, and hasn’t been for years? All I can say is, play around with Autotune for yourself, A/B it on different vocals. You’ll be able to hear the sound it imparts on a recording very soon.

The more “off” the vocal is from the intended pitch, the more obvious the artifacts. Vocals that are very close, you probably won’t hear it at all. It’s even possible to not even turn on auto-tune for vocals that fall within a minimum threshold of accuracy.

But yeah, this isn’t something like digital vs analog or 24bit vs 16bit. There’s no placebo effect here, Autotune has a fairly obvious sound. It’s like trying to explain how you can “hear” the sound a wah-wah pedal makes

 

I literally never said anything about writing songs like that. I said I wanted to hear more energy in his performances. Your point has absolutely nothing to do with what I was saying and comes off as deflection.

 

I would be willing to bet this will be the better album out of the two.

 

I certainly hope so.

 

Yeah, I also haven't heard any autotune. I would presume there is none.