Music: Review - The lean mean funk machine

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS CAMDEN PALACE LONDON

GYM-TONED AND P-funk rooted, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have always been acutely aware that rock'n'roll was supposed to be sexy, as they showed on the taut and Spartan riff-fest that was their 1993 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

Now that the guitarist, John Frusciante, has returned, the line-up that recorded that album has been reunited.

Still horny after all these years, they've called their new record Californication.

The show had no frills, just a couple of amp-stacks, four men, and a lot of tattoos.

When they launched into "Give It Away" just two songs in, you wondered whether they'd peaked too soon.

As the frontman Anthony Kiedis "rapped" his tongue around the song's irresistible hook, to his right the bass-player, Flea, threw out manic, cartoonish shapes while he was splitting the rhythmic atom with nonchalant aplomb.

Frusciante's return was welcomed by the audience, and you could understand why.

While the former Jane's Addiction guitarist, Dave Navarro, is a superb player in his own right, his effects-laden contribution to 1995's One Hot Minute made it sound somewhat overwrought.

In sharp contrast, Frusciante tempers his Hendrix-inspired stylings with the kind of clipped, funk rhythms perfected by James Brown's guitarist Jimmy Nolen.

Thus, during "If You Have To Ask", Frusciante proved that you don't need the whole chicken, just the scratch.

Mid-set, two new songs stood out, the first being "Californication" itself.

Surprisingly, it's in fact about American media imperialism, and, even though Frusciante had a few tuning problems with his backing vocals, it was an obvious choice for the next single.

"Right On Time" was equally impressive - its pumping disco chorus and frenetic verses situating it somewhere between Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" and a speed-metal rap.

Later on came "Under The Bridge", the tune which All Saints have recently divested of both its swagger and of its inventive coda.

At root, it's an outsider's song; a song about feelings of alienation in the metropolis which also touches on the problems with heroin that have plagued several of the Chilis - drug problems that even claimed the life of the group's first guitarist, Hillel Slovak, back in 1988.

The first encore was "Sir Psycho Sexy", a kitschy soft-porn rap which resurrected an old debate - are the Chilis sexy or sexist?

Perhaps you wouldn't want to leave them unchaperoned in the vicinity of your girlfriend's underwear drawer, but to my mind they're still a good advert for freedom of speech.