The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie

By 2011, most people assumed the Red Hot Chili Peppers had said everything they had to say. Then this arrived — a guitar riff so immediate and physical it sounds like Anthony Kiedis is already mid-thought when the song begins. John Frusciante is gone but Flea's bass is everywhere, rubbery and alive, working underneath a guitar line from Josh Klinghoffer that has a Hendrix-ian looseness the band hadn't chased in years. The production is sun-drenched and huge, simultaneously nostalgic and present-tense. Kiedis raps more than sings through most of it, his delivery rhythmically precise without being rigid, and the chorus lifts into genuine melody like a wave cresting. The lyric is impressionistic and playful, full of proper nouns and Los Angeles geography, the kind of lyric-writing that only makes total sense if you understand that RHCP write about place the way other bands write about love. This song belongs to their long California mythology — Sunset Strip, Venice Beach, a city that keeps reinventing itself and taking its musicians with it. It plays best with the volume high, on a stretch of road with no turns, in that specific window of afternoon when everything looks overexposed and golden.