Sorry, going back to the sound of Californication, is it the mastering/manufacturing that’s wrecked the sound? I always figured it’s a mixing issue (everything is soooo hot it crackles) and blamed Rubin. However he recently did Music for Men* which sounds as clean as my bibshorts before an epic ride (clean).
The first Imagine Dragons album is the next candidate for “worst sound”, the waveforms look like somebody used an Adobe Illustrator path filter on them.
As for the albums, I confess I’ve not heard anything after By The Way from end to end, but that’s because everything I have heard, which is plenty because they’re so popular now, sounds EXACTLY the same – melodic self-satisfied boring repetitive weak and very very ” by the numbers”. So, IMHO, they went through utter hell and from this comes a variety of differing, energetic sounds with pain, love, loss, party funk and lots of drugs…all the better for it. Californication sounded like they’d just opened their eyes to what they had become, and the reflection drove a sweeter side to the sound and the combination was very good. After that they just decended into twaddle. I heard Stadium Arcadium was nearly a triple album, they couldn’t figure how to cut it down. Jesus, yak, point proven…. They’ve got no idea how tired it all is now.
*If you like RHCP you might well like this. Not that it’s quite the same thing, but it is excellent. Imagine Dragons, however are tosh of the highest order.