Red Hot Chili Peppers

So I put on The Getaway and… hmm… you know how you can go a decade or so without seeing an old friend (or at least an old acquaintance) and you run into each other and you initially don’t recognize each other? Then you start talking and joshing each other, but it’s still that patina of weird? Yeah. Red Hot Chili Peppers were of my favorite punk-funk nonsense-braggadocio-spouting egalitarians, then wham, “Everybody Knows They’re the Worst Band Ever” (wrong: Skrewdriver!), and so maybe this is post-“Knows”? And the whole album sounds… like the last 20 minutes of a warm, bright winter day where the sun is shooting the gap between two buildings. Fun! Pretty! But, soon, very soon, it will be very cold. Do you have somewhere to go? ANDREW HAMLIN