Album Review: Flea, Honora

Let’s get straight to the point. On Flea’s mightily impressive Honora, ‘Frailed’ is worth the price of admission alone – a goddamn beautiful, 11-minute sprawl, which starts with the deftest bass pluck, and what I think may be a grazed cymbal.

From there, it somehow summons the atmosphere of über-cool ’70s California, before a wheezing trumpet takes you trekking into the hills, followed by a groovy jazz workout and Eastern-scorched fiddle. It’s absolutely dazzling stuff.

The record features six originals along with covers of Eddie Hazel and George Clinton, Frank Ocean, Jimmy Webb, Shea Taylor and Ann Ronell – but Flea takes these songs someplace else. Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’ is leaner and more poignant; ‘Willow Weep For Me’ more experimental and avant garde; and ‘Thinkin About You’ possesses a chill sangfroid. ‘Wichita Lineman’, meanwhile, finds Nick Cave spreading iconic lyrics like hot bitumen on scorching asphalt.

Co-written with, and featuring, Flea’s Atoms For Peace bandmate Thom Yorke, ‘Traffic Lights’ is an irresistibly funky, bustling workout.

‘A Plea’ meanwhile, is a gem altogether – a weighty effort wrapped in a mighty arrangement.

It’s another highlight on an album brimming with them.

9/10