The Red Hot Chili Peppers are – let us put it this way – not especially beloved among musical know-it-alls. Many of them feel seen by a now-famous remark from Nick Cave: »I’m forever near a stereo saying, “What the fuck is this garbage?” And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.« In order to break out of the usual pattern of his main band, bassist Flea has long kept busy on side roads as well, among them Rocket Juice & The Moon with Damon Albarn and Tony Allen, and the supergroup Atoms For Peace with Thom Yorke.
Now his belated solo debut Honora appears. It is a jazz album – not a sort-of-jazz album, not a vaguely-jazz-like album, but a jazz-jazz album. Flea has assembled a first-rate backing band: guitarist Jeff Parker, saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Deantoni Parks (The Mars Volta, Flying Lotus, André 3000). Flea himself sings a little, plays bass and trumpet – and does so with such skill and feeling that one begins to wonder whether he has spent four decades in the wrong band.
Honora is a soulful wonder made out of modern, avant-, soul, spiritual and ambient jazz. It is astonishing how Flea reimagines the notorious guitar solo from the Funkadelic cover »Maggot Brain« on trumpet, or how he interprets Frank Ocean’s »Thinkin’ About You«. Thom Yorke appears on »Traffic Lights«, and the album’s loveliest twist is that of all people Nick Cave sings Jimmy Webb’s »Wichita Lineman«: the man who could never make anything of the Red Hot Chili Peppers now confers distinction on the solo debut of their bassist.
