Saddled with the workmanlike vocals that have seemingly beset all solo guitarists since Keith Richards, Frusciante's singing is the album's largest revelation. At last comfortable with the sound of his own voice, To Record bears no traces of the occasional frightened yodeling that marred his earlier recordings. Not concerned with commercial prettiness, Frusciante immerses himself completely, and the result is some of the most emotional and expressive rock singing in recent memory (witness the alternation between howl and wavering falsetto on "In Rime"). He's helped by his lyrics, which are evocative and thankfully never too random. Largely despondent, lines like "Oh please take us / We're wrong / We live now to relive on and on" repeatedly hint at his past.

Consistency in an album is a good thing--often the best albums are those that establish an ineffable sonic lineament that's distinctive yet uniform across the range of the album. By this standard, To Record gets a congratulatory sticker: The songs on the album don't quite sound like anything else so much as each other, yet each has its own minor key sound and layered guitars. While his instrumental work is generally uncomplicated, it's marked by the same unique style of melodic progressions that stamps his Chili Peppers work (the coda of "Around the World," on the recent Californication is a good example, as is the opening melody of the title track). The opening track, "Going Inside," begins with a brief but excellent feedback-driven solo. The track, along with others like "Remain" and "Fallout" has a distinctly Middle-Eastern melodic feel. Perhaps not coincidentally, these songs, together with the lovely instrumental "Murderers" and the near-perfect pop song "Moments Have You," are the standouts on the album. The songs are mostly in a similar shuffling tempo--there are no particularly fast ones--but "The First Season" and "Saturation" are slower than the rest. Nearly every track is strong, although "Someone's" and "Wind Up Space" are slightly repetitive, and less inventive.

In To Record, Frusciante has created a marvel of restrained, melancholy power pop where less is more. As someone once remarked of a Sun Ra piano solo, "Anyone could have played that. But no one else could have thought of it."

John Frusciante

To Record Only Water for Ten Days