Anthony Kiedis says the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ latest material is as good as anything they’ve ever done.
And the frontman has hinted that he has acoustic ideas on his mind as the band concentrate on their 11th studio title.
The follow-up to 2011’s I’m With You has been in the works for several months, and it’s expected to appear in the first half of 2016.
Kiedis tells Rolling Stone: “We’ve been writing new music for the last year and we’ve written some songs that I feel are as good as any songs we’ve ever written.”
He says of producer Danger Mouse: “He’s very good about coming up with super-modern ideas. But he’ll also touch on the acoustic guitar in the control room, and strip the song down to its acoustic essentials – which is a beautiful place to be.”
The Chilis played a charity show over the weekend, one of their few live commitments during 2015. Kiedis reports that rehearsal included an amount of acoustic experimentation.
“I love to play acoustic, whether we’re talking about By The Way or an old song like Me And My Friends,” says the singer. “These very aggressive, loud, chaotic electric songs work rather nicely on quiet instruments.
“We rehearsed and played everything acoustically from Fire by Jimi Hendrix, to trying to figure out if Californication works on acoustic – which it did.”
Last year, drummer Chad Smith predicted the Chilis’ next album would “break new ground.”
