NME
03rd August 2004, NME (UK)
If you had the Chili Peppers pegged as Spring Break fratboy fodder, check out the resume of John Frusciante. Frusciante got the cock-rock draft in ‘88 to replace a former Chili’s guitarist, dead from a smack overdose, bailed out after getting hooked himself, and made a number of incoherent solo albums to fund his habit. Since detoxing and rejoining the Chilis, however, he’s rebranded himself as rock’s renaissance man, sharing the studio with Johnny Cash and The Mars Volta and taking to the stage as part of Vincent Gallo’s leather suited prog sideshow. It’s this Frusciante we hear on the “The Will to Death”. YThe first of a projected six albums due before the end of 2004, if finds him hunkering down with long-time collaborator Josh Klinghoffer, crafting zooming sheets of spacios wind-tunnel prog and raw, solo-spattered soul. Commercially, it’s suicide. Creatively, though, it places him alongside Mark Lanegan and J Mascis in the chronicle of alt-rock’s lost talents.
—Louis Pattison
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