I'm loving the new Peppers as well. Along w/ Desecration Smile and 21st Century, I think Wet Sand and Slow Cheetah are top notch and Frusciante's The Will to Death and Shadows Collide With People from last year were in heavy rotation for me as well. In regards to them ripping off Petty, I guess there is a resemblance. Bump de Bump on the new one definitely sounds a lot like I Like Dirt from Californication and the beginning of Strip My Mind is a lot like one of the songs off of By the Way, but I haven't had time to figure out which one. Who cares, though. Great album regardless.

I'm in on the "I like this new album, dammit" crowd as well. Yeah, they pull some of the same tricks from their previous stuff. But it works. I have repeatedly been going back to this for the past month. I actually went and bought it after having possession of the leaked copy for a couple weeks and not being able to put the discs up. I will end up buying the vinyl version when it's released in a few weeks as well.

And Gauche said it pretty damn straight with his comment on Frusciante. The man is an absolute beast. Who else in mainstream can compare to his songwriting, playing and his backup vocal abilities? The guy is the total package. Best ever, no. But one of if not THE best around right now, hell yes.

And dammit if "Made You Feel Better" isn't one of the catchiest back to basics rock songs ever.

I was a RHCP fan from the first album, but as much as I'm impressed by noodling, textures and interesting sonic tidbits JF brings to the last couple records, that doesn't hide the fact that Kiedis has written the same melody about 40 times on about 40 different songs in recent years. My favorite is still Mother's Milk and probably always will be.

my favorite is freakey styley man.

kiedis sucks.
chad smith isn't even that good any more (if he ever was)

for all i care turn them off and just let fru and flea go on a crazy sonic experiment. i don't even listen to the lyrics because if i did it would piss me off too much because they suck.

the melodies however are extremely catchy and good because john frusciante probably writes them. kiedies is all image. they know exactly what they are doign and they could care less what splates and the rest of the indie set thinks. that's not their target demographic.