Anyone who has surface-level rock knowledge knows about Flea. The fierce, energetic bassist and core member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of the most influential and acclaimed musicians of our lifetime. Listening to any song by his band will make you wish you could master the four-stringed instrument yourself.
After four decades of composing some of the most powerful, influential and iconic bass lines in rock, Flea decided to reconnect with his childhood love for jazz in his first solo album: “Honora.” Growing up in 1960s New York City, he lived through the era where Bebop came to represent the cultural culmination of jazz as an autonomous art form. His stepfather, a jazz musician, often brought other musicians to their home for jam sessions. In his memoir “Acid for the Children,” Flea describes these jam sessions as ecstatic and life-changing.
“Honora” manifests Flea’s reconnection with his roots. He names the album after his great great grandmother, Honora. Born in Limerick, Ireland, she later moved to Australia. Honora was the only member of her family to survive a brutal famine, and she began working in a warehouse at 16. She spent the majority of her life working long hours in menial labor. In an interview where Flea shared the meaning behind the album’s name, he said, “her story reduced [him] to bare bones.” Although none of the lyrics directly reference Honora, she remains an inspiration for the album. Stripped down to the most fundamental elements, this deeply personal record is about Flea’s love for jazz and his familial ancestry.
“Honora” is unlike any previous project Flea has worked on, but characterizing this album as his retirement from rock paints an incomplete picture. In many of the tracks, you can hear echoes of sonically powerful and ferocious time in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The album’s second track, “A Plea,” is a seven-minute dialogue between the electric and the classical upright bass. You hear the narrator’s dual identities — a rock bassist and jazz bassist — in conversation. These identities are not separate, but converge to make up Flea.
The beauty of this composition is proof that Flea doesn’t have to choose between these seemingly opposite musical traditions. It grabs your attention the moment you hear the thick vibrations of the instruments and keeps you on your tiptoes until the very end. Flea sings with heightened sorrow and passion, asking the listener to “see the God in everyone.” It can come across as a protest song, but in reality, it is a call for action beyond the political realm — a plea for kindness and compassion.
Listening to this album felt less like hearing Flea speak in an entirely new language and more like witnessing the realization of his music’s full emotional potential. In an interview, he said: “I’m just trying, as I grow, to go deeper and deeper into myself and to ultimately love myself … and to love myself, I have to know myself.” Not only does he prove himself as a serious musician, proficient in bass and the trumpet, but as an openly affectionate person. He covers Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman,” turning this country song into a slow jazz ballad featuring Nick Cave’s woeful vocals.
Despite the range in songs, they all share a common allegiance to the jazz philosophy “less is more,” which was first popularized by Miles Davis’ words: “Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.” When musicians reach a certain level of mastery, like Flea, overpopulating an eight-bar solo is not as impressive as playing with the spaces and silences between the notes. Flea, coming from a lineage of great jazz figures, remembers to pause and let the space within songs ring loud. “Wichita Trials” feels simple but moving. His unique cover of the jazz standard ‘Willow Weep for Me’ features a duet of Flea on the trumpet and his producer, Josh Johnson, on the Moog synthesizer. It is simple, non-exhaustive and very atomic.
The album features two other covers that are renditions of famous songs: Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” and Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain.” In the first one, Flea reinvents Ocean’s vocals with equally moving solos on the bass and trumpet, supported by an atmospheric string section consisting of four violins, two violas and one cello. The latter is a shortened cover of Funkadelic’s psychedelic-soul masterpiece, in which Flea replaces the guitar with a trumpet solo that still manages to emanate the same theatricality as the original.
For Flea, music is a sanctuary. Part of what makes this project a journey of self-love is the wide array of original compositions: from the fast-paced and stagy “A Plea,” to the slow, groovy “Traffic Lights,” which features Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. His multifaceted expression, illustrated in the integration of diverse subgenres, reflects the process of self-knowledge and discovery. My personal favorite track is “Frailed,” a ten-minute ambient instrumental resembling a Brian Eno composition. It is grounded in a pulsing beat composed of the electric bass and snare drums, over which a keyboard, viola and trumpet all interchangeably improvise.
The closing track, “Free As I Want To Be,” is where Flea takes complete liberty with his trumpet. It holds an eerily straight drumbeat accompanied by a furtive bassline, reminiscent of early Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea. When the groove gets interrupted by Flea’s horns, we get a Big Bang in the artists’ universe. Layered vocals repeatedly drag the line “I’m free to be what I want to be” as Flea shreds on the horns. The song culminates as his past and present musician selves mesh. Through this record, Flea found freedom. I believe he invites us to try the same.
Andrea Miloshevska PO ’28 believes this is one of the best records of 2026 thus far.
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