Revisit of the Week: John Frusciante - To Record Only Water for Ten Days (2001)
Coincidental timing. Over on my music review site I've just started talking about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and here the RNG provides me with a solo album from their most iconic guitarist. In my discography run I've still got a bit to go before Frusciante makes his entrance and a lot longer until he truly transforms into the John Frusciante we know and love, but in terms of my life with the Peppers overall, this appeared relatively early on. The Peppers were one of my defining bands around the turn of the millennium and because I was a young music fanatic, I jumped into any chance to hear more from them no matter what it was, with no discerning critical eye tossed at the thought of whether it'd truly be worth my time - hence, this purchase of Frusciante's then-latest solo album with only an incredibly faint idea of what the music contained within.
Coincidental timing #2. One of my sisters is currently in the hospital, recovering from an 11-hour surgery completed earlier today to remove a tumor behind her eye they discovered about a month ago. The surgery was successful with no complications, and her condition is currently stable. It was during a visit to the first flat she moved into after leaving the family home that I bought this album; the fancier record shops in the bigger city having a lot more variety than our meager home town's small CD shops. My first listen of this album was in that flat, in her bedroom during a sunny day (I can't remember the season) - if memory serves me right she had left me alone for a bit while getting some errands done, so I hunkered up near her stereo system and put this on. I had my debut listens of a handful albums in that little flat, and those first listens have imprinted heavily into my mind. Listening to this album, I still remember the sunshine through the window and the layout of that room, and wandering into this record with no idea what it'd sound like.
To Record Only Water for Ten Days was Frusciante's third solo album but I like to think of it as his first. The two albums he released before this in the 1990s, after his first departure from RHCP, were drug-addled messes recorded with no quality control and released solely to get more money for more of the said drugs. To Record... was the first he released after cleaning up, finding a new lease in life and reinventing himself as a musician - in the liner notes there's a lovely photo of him beaming with a big, fresh smile (literally - he had to have all his teeth replaced). It was recorded on the road while touring the Peppers' mega-comeback Californication: hence the lo-fi sound, hence the arrangements all boiling down to just Frusciante's voice and multi-tracked guitars, rudimentary drum machines and textural synth pads. It's a scruffy, homely record with a few ingredients, but together those elements create something magical. Frusciante's voice - now in full bloom and a full range - is magical, his cryptic lyrics create worlds even when you don't understand their meaning, his melodic and layered guitar lines are gorgeous and the lo-fi machinery under him give the whole record a dusty yet warm tone.
I was spellbound the moment I heard it and I quickly became obsessed with it - and it set me down the paths of becoming a fan of his solo work, the rewards of which would be reaped later in the 2000s when he went on a mad spree of releases, all pretty great. My RHCP-loving friends never got into his solo material, which made it feel all the more special - this was my hidden world. Returning to this album always feels like returning home - I know every second of it by heart, and it still sounds so unique and wondrous. When I reviewed it for my site I marked it down as a 9/10 (if anyone cares about these things), but I'm not sure what's holding me back from it being one of my rare 10s apart from my general reluctance to hand out that sacred double-digit. I was going to spend some time this week to consider that but then, well, we got the news that my sister's surgery was scheduled for today and I've generally just not had the mood to really write much at all this week (those blog posts earlier this week? Written a while back and just brushed up a little before release).
Amazing album from an amazing artist who not many are familiar with, even though they likely know his name through his much more famous day job. My sisters liked this album as well when she started hearing it by proxy as I listened to it, and I remember burning a copy for her - including a bunch of the b-sides from the period as bonus tracks because she happened to have a nerd of a brother. It has been coincidentally appropriate to listen to this this week.
There won't be a revisit post next week as I'll be quite busy over the next week. Catch up later down the line.
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