It’s somewhat refreshing to get a John Frusciante album without a larger context you automatically compare it with for a change. His last bunch of albums were all a part of the same recording sessions and for most the same release year (more about these in the 2nd part of my Frusciante retrospective released a tad ago) and though each one was a stylistic standout, they were clearly all still a part of the same continuity. The Empyrean is without all that. Almost exactly four years after 2005’s Curtains, Frusciante returns once again with an album with no peers to hang around with, to be automatically compared with.

And that’s just one of the refreshing new things with The Empyrean.

There’s one thing that does warrant a slight comparison with the 2004 album rush when it comes to The Empyrean and that’s the production. Much like the 2004 rush, The Empyrean has that homely lo-fi-esque edge to it. A warm, slightly hazy production that’s far far away from the shininess of a studio production. Admittedly, this doesn’t come off as surprising because all of the man’s albums bar one has utilised homemade recording techniques but it seems John found a way to record he really likes when recording his album rush and has stuck with it.

For his ninth solo studio album, Frusciante has crafted the most artistically cohesive piece of work he’s done, as opposed to the slight quilt-like feeling his albums often have. This isn’t particularly surprising when you consider how The Empyrean is a concept album. As I’ve mentioned before in Indie Paws, I’m one of those people who couldn’t analyse concept album lyrics to form a cohesive story for the love of it, not to mention that John’s always had a somewhat cryptic lyrical style, but when the music and delivery themselves craft a feeling of something larger in the play, it’s a testament of a concept working in all ways.

The Empyrean starts calmly. The 9-minute guitar instrumental “Before the Beginning” starts gently and the highly atmospheric cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” follows with an even more placid pace. Most likely a lot will disagree with me but John’s version of the song beats the original quite clearly, the main reason being in the vocals: I’ve always found Buckley’s voice a bit silly while Frusciante’s hushed, fragile delivery on the cover is beautiful. The pre-release song “Unreachable” soon follows, kicking up the pace in a fantastic way as the drums make their first appearance and the song itself journeys from a slow start to a raging guitar solo heaven climax. In many ways Unreachable was the best possible choice for the first introduction from the album as its long, heavily instrumental and minorly psychedelic rock jam mood pretty much encapsulates the album with itself.

The rest of the album follows much in Unreachable’s way. You could call The Empyrean a prog rock album in its heart but that association brings a heavy load with it and isn’t even particularly true overall:  whilst there’s an emphasis to mood-crafting that isn’t afraid to take its time, there are still brief, more instant parts of the album like the keyboard-heavy “God” and “Heaven” (very much a musical flashback to Frusciante’s past musical works). It ends up so however that the longest songs give the most divine moments of the album: Unreachable is already a Frusciante classic (the instrumental climax gets better with each listen), “Central” builds into a hair-risingly gorgeous rock-out finale where strings swoop in a cinematically epic fashion as Frusciante throws out words like his life depends on it, and “Dark/Light”’s change from the murky Dark-section to the synthetic, upbeat and fluffy discoteque heaven Light-part is one of the best moments in the man’s discography (not to mention the extended finale of Light in general). Oooh, the call-and-answer vocals…

Not all of the songs on The Empyrean are real standouts. The only slightly stumbling track is the string-heavy “One More of Me” and that’s simply because of John’s weird voice changes in it which sound plain ridiculous (I swear he’s trying to imitate the dude from Crash Test Dummies occasionally); musically the song is blissful. Elsewhere “Heaven” and “Enough of Me” are good, but not particularly memorable though they do contain some quite brilliant parts – simply a case of not standing out as well as some of the others. And this doesn’t harm the album one bit. The Empyrean’s greatest asset is the thick atmosphere it manages to bring. Despite the homely production occasionally trying to toss something between the wheels, the album triumphs when it comes to the depth and consistency in sound – it’s an album where the sum is greater than the parts. The vintage keyboard sounds, stylishly composed strings and RHCP-bandmate Flea’s ever-lively bass each craft beautiful soundscapes that work perfectly together with John’s voice and the murky mood-rock of the rest of the instruments. Even without an understanding of the lyrical concept of the album, the music itself crafts its own concept and goes with it triumphantly from the beginning to the end. There’s albums that feel like collections of songs, albums that feel like carefully-crafted cohesive units and then there’s the likes of The Empyrean which take that cohesiveness and turn it into an artform.

That cohesiveness is why The Empyrean has spent so much time playing lately. It creates such a thick atmosphere around it, a world of its own, that it changes the mood instantly as it starts playing, transferring the listener to a whole new state. Its atmosphere is the kind of likes which appear very seldomly. The fact that there’s some utterly brilliant gems of songs included seals the deal. Frusciante’s latest delivers in an unbelievably strong way.

I have always found Frusciante a very difficult artist to rank whenever someone asks me about my favourite albums of his as he’s always had a very stable quality consistency to his albums (bar a few moments). Yet I’d be willing to say that The Empyrean is easily one of his best works. And that’s before an album with an obvious depth this strong in its sound has even fully burrowed into my skull.

2009 starts with a blast after the relative disappointment of 2008.

MP3: Central
MP3: Unreachable

Get The Empyrean from Amazon!

Tags: John Frusciante

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.