Album: Red Hot Chili Peppers, I'm With You (Warner Brothers)

It's business as usual, but with diminishing returns, on I'm With You – the result, perhaps, of sticking with the producer Rick Rubin for six albums.

Too many tracks are ideas searching for closure: "Ethiopia" is hung around one of Flea's bass struts, infectious but undeveloped; "Look Around" is a bland funk-jam rap, as if Anthony Kiedis were sketching observations from a speeding car; and "The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie" is such an abject, aimless jam-rocker it could be The Spin Doctors. The Chili Peppers fare better when they stick to gritty riffing on "Goodbye Hooray", guitars scurrying around like vermin scattering from the light, or make a serious play of their pop-rock leanings, as on the slick "Monarchy Of Roses" and anthemic "Brendan's Death Song".

DOWNLOAD THIS: Monarchy Of Roses; Brendan's Death Song; Goodbye Hooray